College Students’ Responses to Mental Health Status Updates on Facebook

Abstract

Facebook is widely used by the college population, and previous research has shown that mental health references on Facebook are common. Focus groups of college students were held to determine their views of mental health references seen in their peers’ Facebook profiles. Students’ views of mental health references varied from being serious calls for help, to being jokes or attention-seeking behavior. Responses to mental health references depended on the participants’ offline relationship with the poster. Students would contact close friends through a phone call or in-person conversation, but would not approach acquaintances. The prevalence of mental health references on Facebook, and the awareness of these references by college students, may present opportunities for future peer intervention efforts.

Measuring Information Seeking through Facebook: Scale development and initial evidence of Information Seeking in Facebook Scale (ISFS)

“…Therefore, they have suffered from a lack of detailed psychometric support and methodological evidence. Authors developing scales of social media have mainly focused on behavioral frequency of use (e.g., Andreassen, 2012;Bumgarner, 2007;Ellison et al, 2007;Junco, 2011;Rosen et al, 2013;Ross et al, 2009;Yousefi-Nooraie, Dobbins, Broiwers, & Wakefield, 2012) and used qualitative approaches (e.g., Choudhury et al, 2014;Egan, Koff, & Moreno, 2013;Greene et al, 2010;Shaw & Johnson, 2011;Wooley & Peterson, 2012) or failed to present adequate psychometric and validity evidence (e.g., Doodson et al, 2013;Ellison et al, 2007;Wise et al, 2010) in measuring information seeking in Facebook. To address these limitations, the author developed a 23-item scale of information seeking called the ISFS.…”

Suicidality Disclosed Online: Using a Simulated Facebook Task to Identify Predictors of Support Giving to Friends at Risk of Self‐harm

“…Despite efforts to increase effective peer support in response to suicide disclosures, reactions to such communications vary (Egan, Koff, & Moreno, ). Many individuals experiencing suicide ideation are further isolated by their social circle rather than assisted (Eskin, , ).…”

“…Egan et al. () found that college students report being willing to reach out to their peers who post about depression. Using data from the same study as the current research, (Corbitt‐Hall, Gauthier, Davis, & Witte, 2016) found that 88.4% of college students indicated a willingness, dependent on the strength of the relationship they had to the person, to respond to disclosures of suicide on Facebook using either direct (e.g., phone call, text message) or indirect (e.g., contacting a suicide hotline, alerting a family member) strategies.…”

“…Building on this premise, two studies have examined the association between the severity and/or explicitness of an online disclosure of psychological distress and how it is interpreted. In the first study, college students reported that they were willing to help friends who post about their mental health on Facebook only if they felt that the friends’ distress was substantial (Egan et al., ). In the second, study utilizing the same data set as this study, (Corbitt‐Hall et al, ) found that college students were more likely to correctly assess the suicide risk of simulated Facebook posts that communicated moderate or severe suicidality than they were those that communicated mild suicidality.…”

The Virtual Blues: Facebook and Depression in Young Adults

“…Online support interventions may be a possible route of interventions for users with concerning mental health status updates on Facebook (18). In a July 2016 Washington Post story (19), the author described how she contacted Facebook for guidance on what to do when encountering troubling status posts.…”