We’re currently working on a grey literature search of what guidance is currently available and two secondary data analysis projects.
Guidance review
We’re interested in what guidance is freely available to help education and youth organisations support young people with self-harm and suicide. We worked with our collaborators and PPIE groups to identify any gaps in the available guidance, which will aid future guidance development.
We categorised the content of existing guidance which we found and worked with stakeholders and PPIE groups to rate the importance of these categories. This work will inform Phase 2 of the 4S study.
For more information, please contact Hannah Robinson: hannah.robinson@bristol.ac.uk
Secondary data analysis
Communication SDA
We searched academic databases for published research exploring who young people talk to about self-harm and suicide. We found a total of 2090 published articles on this topic. Through screening these articles for relevance and eligibility we identified 44 papers for inclusion in our analysis. We extracted information from the 44 papers about the sample of participants, methods, and results about who young people spoke to about self-harm and suicide. All 44 papers were rated for quality using a checklist. We are currently working to summarise and analyse these findings and write them up for dissemination.
Transparent vs Opaque language SDA
We searched academic databases for published systematic reviews examining techniques that can be used in schools to decrease rates of self-harm and suicide, or suicidal ideation – there were a total of 1117 reviews identified, of which we decided 84 were relevant. We then extracted 240 original papers from these reviews if they fit our criteria. We are currently screening these papers to include in our analysis. Next, we will extract information from the papers about the sample of participants, methods, and results about whether using transparent or opaque language makes a difference to the effectiveness of techniques that can be used in schools. We hope that this will help advise school staff about what language is best to use when discussing self-harm, suicide, and suicidal ideation with students.
Photo 1 by Jens Mahnke; Photo 2 by Eren Li