Message strategies for suicide prevention

Suicide is a problem among college-age youth (18--24 years), as it is the third leading cause of death in this population. Like many public health problems, suicide is preventable, and one way to prevent it is to encourage others to intervene. The current study was designed to investigate the perceived effectiveness of message strategies in encouraging someone to intervene when a person is suicidal.;This study had four phases: (1) pilot study, (2) survey, (3) focus groups, and (4) experiment. The pilot study employed an on-line questionnaire to aid in scale development and elicited beliefs about intervening when someone is suicidal. The survey used a revised version of the questionnaire from the pilot study, and measured attitudes, social norms, perceived behavioral control, intentions, and other influences on behavior (myths, stigma, anticipated reactions). Results produced clean, reliable, and stable factors, which further informed scale development and belief elicitation, and provided guidance for developing persuasive messages designed to persuade college students to intervene when someone is suicidal.;Persuasive messages then were created using "gain/loss frames" and "narrative/statistical styles," and were evaluated in the third phase of the research with four focus groups. Based on focus group feedback, the persuasive messages were revised and then tested in the final phase of the study, the experiment.;The experiment evaluated the messages on perceived message effectiveness, transportation, identification, and intention to intervene. Results suggested that message frame did not affect perceived message effectiveness, identification with the message characters, or transportation into the story; however, message style did influence identification and transportation. Specifically, narrative messages were more associated with identification with story characters than statistical messages, and both statistical and narrative messages were able to transport the reader into the persuasive message, but each message style transported the reader in different ways. Finally, the results showed that while attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control predicted an individual's intention to intervene with someone contemplating suicide, message frame and message style did not.;Keywords. Suicide Prevention, Message Strategies, Theory of Planned Behavior, Prospect Theory, Exemplification Theory...