BMJ  2008;336:905-906 (26 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.39556.435000.80

Letters

Suicide and the internet

Study misses internet’s greater collection of support websites

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

I’m unsure why Biddle et al’s study of suicide and the internet focused on methods of suicide rather than on support, treatment, interventions, crisis hotlines, or information on how to stop or prevent suicide.¹ Suicidal behaviour encompasses all of this and much more.

By stacking the deck with the keywords and search phrases chosen, the researchers found a plethora of websites and information resources on methods of suicide. Their results would probably have been very different had they taken a less biased approach and typed in queries such as "suicide support group", "suicide help", "suicide crisis", or "suicide prevention". When I did a search using "suicide" (the keyword used by most people), the top 10 sites contained no pro-suicide websites.

The researchers made a conscious decision to focus on suicide methods and, as would be expected, found many websites with such information. Even an informational resource might briefly mention such . . . [Full text of this article]

¹ PsychCentral.com, Newburyport, MA 01950, USA

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Relevant Article

Suicide and the internet

Lucy Biddle, Jenny Donovan, Keith Hawton, Navneet Kapur, and David Gunnell
BMJ 2008 336: 800-802. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]