Identifying therapeutic characteristics of digital social media narratives about suicide: a mixed methods investigation.

ABSTRACT: Recently, we found adults who received digital bibliotherapy featuring lived-experience narratives related to suicidal thoughts and behaviors reported lower suicidal thoughts, mediated by increased social connectedness and optimism. This study aimed to identify characteristics of narratives associated with decreased suicidal thinking and increased social connectedness and optimism. 1532 users of a social media platform responded to surveys before and after reading narratives. Mixed-methods content analysis and clustered multidimensional scaling tested whether clusters that shared narrative characteristics were related to suicidal thoughts, social connectedness and optimism. We identified three narrative clusters: Cluster 1: "Encouraging Readers to Live," Cluster 2: "Sharing Personal Storie

SUBMITTER: Stubbing J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12408815 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature