2007/03/01 by Itzhak Gilat, Golan Shahar · 1 citation
Psychology · Medicine · Engineering · #Suicide and Self-Harm Studies #Digital Mental Health Interventions #Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health #Hotline #The Internet #Asynchronous communication #Interpersonal communication #Psychology #Distress #Suicide prevention #Emotional distress #Poison control #Applied psychology #Clinical psychology #Medicine #Psychiatry #Medical emergency #Social psychology #Telecommunications #Engineering #Computer science #World Wide Web
paper · doi:10.1521/psyc.2007.70.1.12
openalex publication_date 2007/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
The telephone and the internet have become popular sources of psychological help in various types of distress, including a suicide crisis. To gain more insight into the unique features of these media, we compared characteristics of calls to three technologically mediated sources of help that are part of the volunteer-based Israeli Association for Emotional First Aid (ERAN): Telephonic hotline (n = 4426), personal chat (n = 373) and an asynchronous online support group (n = 954). Threats of suicide were much more frequent among participants in the asynchronous support group than the telephone and personal chat. These findings encourage further research into suicide-related interpersonal exchanges in asynchronous online support groups.