Indicators of Pre-Suicidal State of Minors in the Internet Space

Abstract

The article aims to describe potential indicators of pre-suicidal state of minors manifesting in online-behavior that were revealed in the empirical study which involved 43 respondents aged 13-15 (M=14.19). The subjects for the study were selected among the teenagers who had responded to our advertisement messages published in various groups on the VKontakte social network. The following methodologies were used: UCLA Loneliness Scale (version 3) (D. Russell, L. A. Peplau, M. Ferguson); Beck Hopelessness Inventory; WHO-5 Well-being Index (1998); Cognitive Errors in Online Communication (I.S. Luchinkina); Sentence Completion for Events from the Past Test (SCEPT) (F.Raes et al.); Individual Typological Child Questionnaire (L.N. Sobchik). The data obtained lead to conclude about the characteristics of the profile related to presence of a distinct pre-suicidal condition: a tendency towards increase in the proportion between the number of subscriptions where suicide is mentioned (including those associated with corresponding emotions, as well communities collecting suicide-related art) and the total number of subscriptions. The number of comments on one's page is inversely proportional to the severity of one's pre-suicidal condition.

Keywords

• online behaviour
• pre-suicidal state
• cognitive component of pre-suicidal state
• cognitive biases
• autobiographical memory