Social Research ¦ Market Research ¦ Behavioural Insight ¦ Evaluation ¦ SROI
Social Research ¦ Market Research ¦ Behavioural Insight ¦ Evaluation ¦ SROI
Samaritans is a suicide-prevention and awareness charity that offers various venues of support for those experiencing mental health challenges and people who are supporting loved ones with mental health challenges. They work to prevent mental health crises, and to act when people do experience them.
Samaritans asked for our help to explore responses to existing messaging found across social media platforms and forums pertaining to self-harm and or suicide.
We held 6 virtual focus group in December 2021. An independent recruitment specialist connected MEL Research with people with lived experience of self-harm and/or suicide and people who had experience of supporting those who are suicidal and/or self-harming.
In total 30, people participated in focus groups.
We were able to deliver clear recommendations for what is and isn’t helpful for messaging on self-harm and/or suicide online based on the responses of those who took part in our focus groups. This information offers crucial insight into creating the most effective online responses to signs of a mental health crisis. [Amount of time] after this research was conducted, the information we obtained is now used as a Samaritans standard guideline for advising social media companies on best practice to messaging regarding suicide and self-harm. This in turn is giving social media sites the ability to reduce harm to their users and best support those online who are struggling.
We delivered our results in an extensive presentation that covered key findings and recommendations. This presentation included Key Headlines, and then in-depth breakdowns of different aspects of online harm prevention. This included:
