‘#YouCanTalk’: A multimodal discourse analysis of suicide prevention and peer support in the AustralianBeyondBlueplatform

Abstract

Research has shown that suicide rate in Australia is on the rise and that most people who die by suicide are not in contact with mental health services. They most likely communicate their suicidal thoughts to family members or close friends, whose responses may sound unhelpful and/or dismissive, thus reinforcing suicidal ideation. This national emergency has been tackled via a social media campaign, #YouCan Talk, launched by a government-supported digital platform, BeyondBlue. This article adopts a multimodal discourse analysis approach to investigate how peer support is encouraged and articulated in the context of mental health discourse for suicide prevention. The two case studies selected for analysis from the BeyondBlue platform are (1) the #YouCanTalk social media campaign, designed to teach carers to identify severe depression and effectively respond to suicide warning signs and (2) a sample of posts from a thread for peer support in a monitored online forum devoted to help carers who seek peer advice. Unlike previous research, the article focuses on how pronouns and verbs index interpersonal relations in a systemic-functional perspective as well as other multimodal resources, such as visuals, layout and hyperlinking, to understand how identities are entextualised by both professional health providers and peer carers in digital platforms that address mental health issues.

#Online harms or benefits? An ethnographic analysis of the positives and negatives of peer‐support around self‐harm on social media

“…This finding aligns with work that has recognised the benefits of online interactions in relation to self‐harm (Baker & Fortune, 2008; Shanahan et al, 2019; Smithson et al, 2011). That young people use social media platforms to both give and receive peer‐support has also been found in suicide research (Luxton et al, 2012; Sindoni, 2019). However, our data point to the need for further investigation of the differences between online suicide and self‐harm discussions in terms of motivation, content and impact.…”

Cumplimiento de las recomendaciones de la OMS en noticias sobre suicidios. Análisis de la prensa digital española (2010-2017)

“…Otros trabajos analizan el impacto del uso de las redes sociales en la actitud hacia el suicidio(Choi y Noh, 2020) y la utilización de campañas preventivas específicas para reducir la mortalidad por esta causa (Sindoni, 2020;Pirkis et al, 2019). Incluso los estudios más actuales contemplan la incidencia de la COVID 19 en relación con el suicidio (Wake, Paton y Pryor, 2020).…”

Language Style Matching as a Counseling Skill Evaluation Tool

“…About two decades ago, no counseling research examined a clinician's ability to determine risk through counseling dialog examination (Reeves et al, 2004). Recently, just a few have applied linguistics to examine suicidal discourse in the broader helping professions (Fernández-Cabana et al, 2015;Rowley, 2019;Sindoni, 2020). Second, this study contributes to the counseling profession by disrupting current practice using LSM as an evaluation tool (Tadajewski & Hewer, 2011).…”