School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2018 Dec 26;16(1):54. doi: 10.3390/ijerph16010054.
People with suicidal ideation (PSI) are increasingly using social media to express suicidal feelings. Researchers have found that their internet-based communication may lead to the spread of suicidal ideation, which presents a set of challenges for suicide prevention. To develop effective prevention and intervention strategies that can be efficiently applied in online communities, we need to understand the behavior of PSI in internet-based communities. However, to date there have been no studies that specifically focus on the behavior of PSI in Chinese online communities. A total of 4489 postings in which users explicitly expressed their suicidal ideation were labeled from 560,000 postings in an internet-based suicidal community on Weibo (one of the biggest social media platforms in China) to explore their behavior. The results reveal that PSI are significantly more active than other users in the community. With the use of social network analysis, we also found that the more frequently users communicate with PSI, the more likely that users would become suicidal. In addition, Chinese women may be more likely to be at risk of suicide than men in the community. This study enriches our knowledge of PSI's behavior in online communities, which may contribute to detecting and assisting PSI on social media.
有自杀意念的人（PSI）越来越多地使用社交媒体来表达自杀感受。研究人员发现，他们的互联网通信可能会导致自杀意念的传播，这给自杀预防带来了一系列挑战。为了制定可以在在线社区中有效实施的预防和干预策略，我们需要了解PSI在互联网社区中的行为。然而，迄今为止，还没有专门针对中国在线社区中 PSI 行为的研究。从微博（中国最大的社交媒体平台之一）上的一个基于互联网的自杀社区的 56 万条帖子中，共标记了 4489 条用户明确表达自杀意念的帖子，以探讨他们的行为。研究结果表明，PSI 在社区中的活跃度明显高于其他用户。通过社会网络分析，我们还发现，用户与 PSI 交流越频繁，用户自杀的可能性就越大。此外，社区中的中国女性可能比男性更容易有自杀风险。这项研究丰富了我们对在线社区中 PSI 行为的认识，这可能有助于在社交媒体上发现和帮助 PSI。
