Martland, Kacey (2024) Suicide Risk in Motion: How Moderator and Peer Discourse Influence Projected Suicide Behaviour. Honours thesis, University of Southern Queensland. (Unpublished)
Abstract
Fluid vulnerability theory (FVT) hypothesises that suicide factors, suicide-states, and vulnerabilities are fluid constructs. Self-regulation mechanisms maintain risk-safety variability when at baseline. Suicide thoughts and/or behaviours (STBs) emerge, however, when an external or internal trigger activates an individual’s suicide-mode resulting in a specific suicide-state that disrupt self-regulation mechanisms and create a negative feedback loop. This case study sought to explicate what communication-practice/s online-forum-users and online-forum-moderators use to recognise emerging suicide-specific vulnerabilities and shift the at-risk-user with STBs from risk to safety. A single case was selected for this project from a large data corpus. The corpus contained 34 threads of online-forum communication and corresponding emails between an at-risk-user in a suicidal-crisis, non-suicidal online forum-users, and professional online-forum-moderators from an Australian online mental health forum. The studied case contained 34 forum-posts and 3 related email interactions that displayed four episodes across three days. Unsolicited advice-giving sequences were identified and examined using ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EMCA). Results indicate that written communication, as interaction, had various implications when an at-risk user is in an activated-suicide-state. How advice was offered to an at-risk-user is shaped by the deontic strength of the advice, and the symmetrical-role of online-forum-users and asymmetrical-role of online-forum-moderators used to shift an at-risk-user towards safety. The findings contribute to a proof-of-concept for understanding suicide-specific vulnerability within FVT. These results reveal that FVT and EMCA have merit for examining in-situ, text based, communication-practices online-forum-users and online-forum-moderators use to shift an at-risk-user in an activated-suicide-state from risk to safety.
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| Item Type: | Thesis (Non-Research) (Honours) |
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| 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: | Christensen, Steven |
| Qualification: | Bachelor of Science (Honours) (Psychology) |
| Date Deposited: | 28 Jan 2026 01:09 |
| Last Modified: | 28 Jan 2026 01:09 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Activated-suicide-state, Advice, Deontics, Online-forums, Suicide-specific vulnerability. |
| Fields of Research (2008): | 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 1701 Psychology > 170106 Health, Clinical and Counselling Psychology |
| Fields of Research (2020): | 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5203 Clinical and health psychology > 520304 Health psychology |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/53103 |
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