Intervention(s)
We investigated the impact of three educative suicide prevention websites compared to a website not related to suicide and tested the moderating effect of participants’ baseline suicidality on the effects. Group 1 viewed the website of the Youth-Life-Line, Group 2 was exposed to the website of U25 Freiburg, and participants of Group 3 were presented with the website of Friends for Life. The control group viewed the website of the Austrian boy scouts. The participants were instructed that they had 10 minutes to browse through the website, search for information on suicide and suicide prevention, and learn about all aspects of the topic they perceived as relevant. Questionnaires on mood, suicidal ideation, suicide-related knowledge, and attitudes toward suicide and seeking professional help were completed before (T1) and immediately after exposure to the website (T2) as well as approximately one week later (T3) to test the persistence of any effect. The participants were instructed to not search for information on suicide or suicide prevention between T2 and T3 or talk with other participants about this study. Based on ethical considerations, suicidal participants, defined as individuals with a score of ≥ 34 on the German version of the Beck Hopelessness Scale, which was completed at T1, were offered counselling by a psychologist and excluded from the study. After the intervention, we offered psychological counselling to all participants to help them cope with any distress resulting from exposure to the website or from answering questions related to suicidality. All participants received a gift voucher amounting to 5 Euro for their participation in the study. The study was conducted at the Center for Public Health, Medical University of Vienna, Austria, and was approved by the ethical review board (study protocol 2063/2013, date: 2014-01-27).