Research has shown that the best way to prevent suicide is for people in distress to hear from someone who cares about them. But all too often, friends and family have no idea how to help.
That’s why we partnered with Facebook.
The platform is in a unique position to get help and hope to people in crisis.
In 2016, Vibrant and Facebook created Compassionate Connections, a program that enables Facebook users to easily flag a troubling post and instantly connect them to the help they need. The flagger immediately receives practical advice about how to reach out to the struggling friend, and the person in trouble is encouraged to seek support from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
In 2017, we took our collaboration to a new level with new suicide prevention tools:
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- Artificial Intelligence: Now, if someone is expressing thoughts of suicide in any type of Facebook post, Facebook’s artificial intelligence will both proactively detect it and flag it to prevention-trained human moderators, and make reporting options for viewers more accessible.
- Help people in real time on Facebook Live: If you’re watching your friend stream something via Facebook Live and they say something that worries you, you will now be able to reach out to the person and report the video to Facebook, which will be able to provide a set of resources to the person while they’re streaming via Live.
- Live chat support through Facebook Messenger: The platform has added the ability for people to connect with crisis support partners — like Crisis Text Line, the National Eating Disorder Association and the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline — over Messenger. Now people will see the option to message with someone in real time directly from the organization’s Page or through Facebook’s suicide prevention tools.