Youth Suicide Prevention & Social Media: The #Chatsafe Project

In this course, Dr. Louise La Sala, Research Fellow for Orygen, Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, shares the alarming statistics about youth suicide rates in Australia and the frequently negative role of social media in that. Given Australia’s high percentage of young smartphone users and their concomitant high level of engagement with social media, La Sala wondered if it would be possible to run youth suicide prevention campaigns entirely on social media. The #Chatsafe website, research, and resources (co-designed with young people) are attempts to do that. Findings from the several studies conducted so far (outlined in the talk) show that #Chatsafe increased young people’s willingness to intervene against suicide and their confidence in communicating about it. Study participants became more likely to monitor their posts for harmful content and more likely to contact someone directly if they believed that they were at risk.