HISTORY OF THE SAFE SPACE
At Vibrant Emotional Health, our goal is to build a society in which wellness can be a reality for everyone. Vibrant’s Safe Space seeks to provide evidence-based self-help tools, education, and resources to people looking for support alongside crisis services such as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, as well as people in emotional distress who may not be inclined to use a crisis service. The development of the Safe Space was done in collaboration with the three national advisory committees of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which is funded by SAMHSA and administered by Vibrant.
Research has shown that empowering people to choose their own digital supports when they most need them can have a positive impact on mental health and suicide prevention. A recent study in Austria where adults with suicidal thoughts were exposed to German suicide prevention websites (featuring educational information, coping tips, and some stories of persons with lived experience) showed significant reductions in suicidal thoughts and significant, sustained increases in suicide prevention knowledge.[1] The unique importance of leveraging online resources to prevent suicide was underscored by a survey of Australian self-harming youth seeking help online, which found that they were less likely to have disclosed their suicidality offline[2].
This desire for engaging more self-help resources is consistent with findings related to suicidal Lifeline callers followed-up by Gould et al. (2012) , which noted that “Our findings emphasize the necessity of respecting and targeting individuals’ strong need for self-efficacy in order to optimize their receipt of help. (…) The strategy of enhancing and promoting self-care and informal care has long been employed by crisis counselors, and our findings suggest that this should continue to be a key component of crisis interventions.”
ABOUT THE FEATURED RESOURCES
The resources and tools in this Safe Space should not be used as a replacement for crisis or emotional health services. If you are in emotional distress or suicidal crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or visit Lifeline’s crisis chat at suicidepreventionlifeline.org/chat.
All resources featured on Vibrant’s Safe Space are determined using Vibrant’s custom rubric for evaluating the efficacy and impact of digital mental health and sucide prevention tools. Visitors to the Safe Space are encouraged to vote for resources that are most helpful to them, and to share feedback. The resources featured on the Safe Space are regularly re-evaluated for reported satisfaction, informing decisions about new items to be added or developed for the site.
[1] Til B, Tran U, Voracek M, Niderkrotenthaler T (2017). Beneficial and harmful effects of educative suicide prevention websites: randomized control trial exploring Papageno v. Werther effects. British Journal of Psychiatry, 211(12); 109-115
[2] Frost M, Casey L, Rando N (2016). Self-injury, help-seeking, and the Internet: Informing online service provision for young people. Crisis, 37 (1), 68-76.