THURSDAY, April 10 (HealthDay News) -- A new British study says
that people surfing the Web for information about suicide are more
likely to find sites that encourage the act rather than offering
help and support.
Researchers from the universities of Bristol, Oxford and
Manchester entered a dozen search terms, one at a time, into each
of the four most popular Internet search engines to try to
replicate how someone might look for information about how to
commit suicide. They then analyzed the first 10 results turned up
by each search -- 480 results in total.
The findings, published in the April 12 issue of
BMJ, included 240 different sites, just under half of which
offered information about methods of suicide. Almost a fifth of all
the studied search engine results were sites dedicated to suicide,
and half of those appeared to encourage, promote or facilitate
killing oneself.
Only 62 sites, or 13 percent, were geared more toward suicide
prevention or offering support. Just 59 sites actively discouraged
suicide.
Information about committing suicide was found not only on
almost all of the dedicated suicide and factual information sites
but also on 21 percent of the support and prevention sites as well
as 55 percent of academic or policy sites. All news reports of
suicides in the study also provided information about methods.
The three sites that appeared most frequently during the
Internet searches -- conducted using the Google, Yahoo, MSN and
Ask.com search engines -- were all pro-suicide. The information
site Wikipedia was fourth most popular. All four sites evaluated
methods of suicide, including detailed information about speed,
certainty and the likely amount of pain associated with each
method.
The study authors concluded that service providers might try
using Web site optimization strategies to improve the chances that
suicide prevention and support sites show up higher in the results
list when people seek information about suicide methods.
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more
about
suicide prevention.
