Suicide Literacy And Suicide Risk:The Mediation Effect Of Help Seeking Intentions And Its Intervention

The risk of suicide includes suicidal ideation,suicidal plans,suicidal preparation,suicide attempts,and suicide deaths.If suicidal ideation is not promptly and effectively helped or intervened,it may turn into high-risk suicidal behavior,and even lead to death by suicide.Individuals at risk of suicide can reduce the risk of suicide death through timely and effective help and treatment.However,people with suicidal tendencies often do not want to seek help from others,or rely too much on non-professional help.Therefore,it is necessary to intervene in the help-seeking intentions of Chinese university students,so that individuals realize the importance of seeking help,and effectively prevent the occurrence of suicide events.Media reports of suicide prevention are an emerging suicide prevention intervention method,and studies have shown that media reports of suicide prevention can effectively improve suicide prevention-related knowledge and improve attitudes towards help-seeking.Therefore,it may benefit the vast majority of media information recipients,thereby increasing the public’s willingness to seek psychological help for suicide risk.Currently,there is little research on Suicide literacy and help-seeking intentions in China,and most of it focuses on the willingness and behavior of the general public to seek help for psychological distress or mental illness,with little attention paid to their help-seeking intentions in the face of suicidal crisis.It is still unclear how suicide literacy and help-seeking intentions affects suicide risk of Chinese university students.Therefore,this study aims at exploring the relationship between Suicide literacy and university students’ suicide risk,with a focus on the mediating role of professional and non-professional help-seeking intentions.Additionally,this study will intervene in university students’ help-seeking intentions through media reports to increase their awareness of suicide risk and enhance their willingness to seek psychological help,thus reducing the suicide risk among university students.This study consists of two parts.In Study 1,a questionnaire will be used to survey597 university students to verify the multiple mediating effects of professional and non-professional help-seeking intentions between suicide literacy and university students’ suicide risk.In Study 2,an experiment will be conducted on 180 university students who will be divided into groups for reading interventions,to investigate whether media reports of suicide prevention can lower university students’ suicide risk by intervening in their professional and non-professional help-seeking intentions.The results of the study are as follows:(1)There was a significant negative correlation between suicide literacy and suicide risk,but no significant correlation was found between professional or non-professional help-seeking intentions and suicide literacy or suicide risk.(2)The treatment and prevention dimension of Suicide literacy not only directly predicted suicide risk,but also indirectly affected suicide risk through the multiple mediating effects of non-professional and professional help-seeking intentions.(3)Neither professional nor non-professional interventions significantly increased the help-seeking intentions of participants,and there was no significant difference between two intervention methods.(4)For participants without suicidal ideation,three reading materials could immediately reduce their suicide risk,but the intervention effect was not sustained after two weeks.For participants with suicidal ideation,three reading materials could not immediately reduce their suicide risk,but their suicide risk was significantly reduced after two weeks.(5)More than half of the participants believed that the experiment had a positive effect on them,and there was no significant difference in the effect of the experiment on the three groups of participants.