Googling for Suicide–Content and Quality Analysis of Suicide-Related Websites: Thematic Analysis (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND Suicide represents a public health concern, imposing a dramatic burden. Pro-suicide websites are “virtual pathways” facilitating the insurgence of suicidal behaviors, especially among socially-isolated, susceptible individuals. OBJECTIVE To characterize suicide-related web-pages in the Italian language. METHODS The first five most commonly used search engines in Italy (namely, Bing©, Virgilio©, Yahoo©, Google©, and Libero©) were mined, searching for “suicidio” (Italian for suicide). For each search, the first 100 web-pages were considered. Web-sites resulting from each search were collected and duplicates deleted, in such a way that unique web-pages were analyzed and rated, using the HONcode© instrument. RESULTS Sixty-five web-pages were included: 12.5% were anti-suicide and 6.3% explicitly pro-suicide. The majority of the included websites had a mixed/neutral attitude towards suicide (81.2%) and had an informative content and purpose (60.9%). Most web-pages targeted adolescents as age-group (59.4%), contained a reference to other psychiatric disorders/co-morbidities (65.6%), were with a medical/professional supervision/guidance (70.3%), without figures/pictures related to suicide (64.1%) and did not contain any access restraint (96.9%). CONCLUSIONS The major shortcoming is the small sample size of web-pages analyzed and the search limited to the keyword “suicide”. Specialized mental health professionals should try to improve their presence online and providing high-quality material.