Suicide Prevention Outreach on Social Media Delivered by Trained Volunteers.

There is a need to develop new ways to reach and engage people at risk for suicidal behavior. Suicide prevention outreach on social media (SPOSM) represents a promising strategy, and trained volunteers could potentially provide the needed human resources. We aimed to investigate users' perception of SPOSM delivered by volunteers of the Israeli Sahar organization and its potential to promote help-seeking behavior. Outreach messages written by Sahar volunteers between July 2015 and June 2020 in response to suicidal posts on a social media site were screened. User responses were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis. One hundred sixteen user responses were analyzed. Positive impact themes were identified in 69.8% of responses, while 16.4% of responses mentioned barriers to care and 10.3% were negative. As the study is based on real-life data, the data are limited to users who chose to respond to outreach. The findings suggest that volunteer-based SPOSM is viewed positively by many users and may foster help-seeking behavior. The findings also outline challenges such as emotional barriers to care and privacy concerns.