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Have you heard of any suicide prevention apps on smartphones? If you haven't, some of them are: Stop Suicide, Suicide Safe, Stay Alive, Relief Link, You Are Important, and many more.
According to the WHO, over 800,000 people die by suicide across the world each year. The sadder truth is that they say, "This estimate is conservative, with the real figure likely to be higher because of the stigma associated with suicide, lack of reliable death recording procedures, and religious or legal sanctions against suicide in some countries."
A new Australian study is now suggesting that smartphone apps designed to assist with suicide prevention may not necessarily get people in crisis the help they need or send the best messages about mental health.
Rather than encourage users to contact a crisis hotline, physician or therapist, many apps are more likely to suggest people reach out to peers for help, the study of 49 apps found.
Worse, two apps listed methods of committing suicide, which might be intended as a prevention effort but could give dangerous ideas to people in distress, the researchers note in PLoS One.
Another issue with apps is that users have to install them and then decide to use them in a crisis, which might not always happen when people feel suicidal, noted Dr. Robert Steinbrook, a researcher at Yale University School of Medicine who wasn’t involved in the study.
More research is also needed to determine what features in apps encourage people to actually contact crisis hotlines or physicians, Steinbrook added.
SOURCE: PLoS One
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