Pagsanjan, Jeff (2023) Interactionally Reifying Suicide Risk: Exploring the Interactional Practices of Moderators and Members of an Online Mental Health Forum. Honours thesis, University of Southern Queensland. (Unpublished)
Abstract
Suicide is pervasive and its impacts are wide reaching. Yet, access to timely mental health
care is challenging for those experiencing suicidal thoughts and behaviours (STB).
Increasingly, people are turning to online mental health forums to seek support for mental
health concerns, which includes STBs. However, little is known about how users of online
mental health forums interact with individuals who present themselves as being at risk of
imminent suicide. Thus, this study aimed to answer how moderators and users interactionally
reify suicide risk within a forum post. Using Conversation Analysis, a corpus of 34 threads
that contained 617 posts, 56 emails, featuring 90 different forum users and 15 different
moderators was examined. The analysis focussed on posts by moderators that addressed the
risk of suicide contained within a user’s post, and followed how it was received by the
potentially at-risk user. Findings suggest suicide risk is reified by using two distinct practices.
One is to topicalise suicide risk in a post, whereas the other moved the interaction off the
forum to engage directly with the user via email. Both practices are shaped by the community
guidelines, and are constructed using a language of safety rather than risk. These guidelines
also constrain a user in the way they discuss suicide in this forum. These constraints create
difficulties in ascribing actions to the activities of moderators. Therefore, future studies are
needed to explicate this further, in order to ascribe the social action in progress
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| Item Type: | Thesis (Non-Research) (Honours) |
|---|---|
| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Additional Information: | Current UniSQ staff and students can request access to this thesis. Please email research.repository@unisq.edu.au with a subject line of SEAR thesis request and provide: Name of the thesis requested and Your name and UniSQ email address |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Current – Faculty of Health, Engineering and Sciences - School of Psychology and Wellbeing (1 Jan 2022 -) |
| Supervisors: | Steven Christensen |
| Qualification: | Bachelor of Science (Honours) |
| Date Deposited: | 06 Aug 2025 02:02 |
| Last Modified: | 06 Aug 2025 02:02 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | suicide risk, conversation analysis, troubles-telling, mental health forum, suicide |
| Fields of Research (2008): | 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 1799 Other Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 179999 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences not elsewhere classified |
| Fields of Research (2020): | 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5299 Other psychology > 529999 Other psychology not elsewhere classified |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/52646 |
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