When "Self-Harm" Means "Suicide": A Topic Modeling Study of Adolescent Online Help-Seeking for Self-Harm.

IF 2.5 3区医学 Q2 PSYCHIATRY

Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior Pub Date : 2025-12-01 DOI:10.1111/sltb.70055

Monika Neff Lind, Afsaneh Razi, Hanneke Scholten, Madeleine J George, Munmun De Choudhury, Isabela Granic, Shalini Lal, Pamela J Wisniewski, Nicholas B Allen

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Introduction: The 15%-20% of adolescents worldwide who engage in nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) face an increased risk of transitioning from suicidal ideation to suicide attempt. To resist NSSI urges, young people often seek peer support online. We examined adolescent help-seeking on a purpose-built online mental health peer support platform, which is a critically understudied help-seeking venue.

Methods: Adolescents' help-seeking posts in the "Self Harm" category on a large online peer support platform (575,261 posts from 114,937 users) were analyzed using topic modeling. We assessed the prevalence of NSSI-related topics versus morbid/suicidal topics.

Results: Our 12-topic model produced interpretable themes. Three main findings emerged: posts included little information about the context of self-harm behavior; there was minimal evidence of pro-self-harm content in posts; and the primary topics of the posts were evenly split between NSSI-related topics and morbid/suicidal topics.

Conclusion: Our findings have important implications for online mental health communities: requiring users to select a narrow category for their post may limit contextual information; moderation of pro-self-harm content may reduce its prevalence; and the absence of dedicated spaces for suicidal users may funnel those users into NSSI-focused spaces, potentially increasing risk for all users.

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当“自残”意味着“自杀”：青少年网络自残求助的话题建模研究。

全世界15%-20%从事非自杀性自伤（NSSI）的青少年面临着从自杀意念过渡到自杀企图的风险增加。为了抵制自伤的冲动，年轻人经常在网上寻求同伴的支持。我们在一个专门建立的在线心理健康同伴支持平台上调查了青少年寻求帮助的情况，这是一个严重缺乏研究的寻求帮助的场所。方法：对某大型网络同伴支持平台上114,937名用户发表的575,261篇青少年“自残”类求助帖子进行主题建模分析。我们评估了与自伤相关的话题与病态/自杀话题的流行程度。结果：我们的12个主题模型产生了可解释的主题。主要有三个发现：帖子中几乎没有关于自残行为背景的信息；帖子中支持自残内容的证据极少；帖子的主要主题平均分为与自伤相关的主题和病态/自杀主题。结论：我们的研究结果对在线心理健康社区具有重要意义：要求用户为他们的帖子选择一个狭窄的类别可能会限制上下文信息；适度的自残内容可以减少其流行；而缺乏专门为有自杀倾向的用户提供的空间可能会将这些用户集中到以轻伤为中心的空间，从而潜在地增加所有用户的风险。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior Medicine-Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health

CiteScore

5.40

自引率

3.10%

发文量

期刊介绍： An excellent resource for researchers as well as students, Social Cognition features reports on empirical research, self-perception, self-concept, social neuroscience, person-memory integration, social schemata, the development of social cognition, and the role of affect in memory and perception. Three broad concerns define the scope of the journal: - The processes underlying the perception, memory, and judgment of social stimuli - The effects of social, cultural, and affective factors on the processing of information - The behavioral and interpersonal consequences of cognitive processes.