Session: Preventing Suicide By Increasing Help-Seeking Among People with Elevated Depressive Symptomatology: Social Psychological Approaches (Society for Prevention Research 24th Annual Meeting)

Depressive symptomatology is one of the strongest predictors of suicide, particularly if accompanied by hopelessness. Considering half of the people who kill themselves never tell anyone about their plans, increasing help-seeking among people with elevated depressive symptomology can save lives. Media campaigns are one way to increase help-seeking; however, prior attempts have backfired and decreased help-seeking. The current symposium, which is in line with the conference theme of promoting health equity among populations at risk, will present six papers that utilize social-psychological theorizing with the goal of increasing the receipt of help among people with depressive symptomology.

The first paper illustrated how cognitions about help-seeking become increasingly negatively biased as level of depression becomes more severe. The second study asked people to recall a time when they received family support which unexpectedly led to reduced perceived family functioning in individuals with elevated depressive symptomatology.

The second and third presentations will focus on the application of attitude scholarship to the depression domain. The first paper proposes a new approach, an attitude strength diagnostic, for persuading people with elevated depressive symptomology to seek help. The second paper experimentally assesses whether refutational two-sided messages are more effective than one-sided messages. A second experiment assesses the utility of functional matching versus mismatching.

The fourth and fifth presentations report on a different approach for increasing help-seeking for people with elevated depressive symptomatology: a positive emotion infusion (PEI).  The fourth presentation will present the rationale behind the PEI approach. It will then report on two experiments which highlight the utility of an elevation based PEI, and two experiments highlighting the possible harms of a gratitude-based PEI. The fifth presentation will report on the successful use of a savoring-based PEI on help-seeking.

The final presentation will tap the social psychological framework of attribution theory. Turning to people with post-partum depression (PPD), the sixth presentation will report on a series of studies highlighting how changing perceptions of blame can increase sympathy and reduce anger, thereby increasing the provision of help to woman suffering from PPD.

It is expected that the application of social psychological theorizing with the goal of creating more effective campaigns to increase the receipt of help among people with depressive symptomology, and thus reducing suicide, will be of interest to the members of SPR.