Dr David Milne was awarded an innovation grant for research titled ‘Investigating the acceptability and effectiveness of digital monitoring for identifying youth at risk of suicide and improving their engagement with crisis services’.
Researcher statement: Receiving this grant is important because it will allow us to design and develop a targeted intervention that will hopefully make a large and sustained positive impact on the help-seeking journeys of young Australians. Previous studies have demonstrated that crisis helplines quickly reduce the level and urgency of suicidal ideation in young people, but also highlighted the many barriers that prevent young people from engaging with them. Our research will focus on the 2.8 million young people who visit ReachOut.com each year, of whom ~12% of the are suicidal at the time of their visit. We will investigate how to automatically identify at-risk visitors using their browsing behaviour, and how to sensitively and persuasively encourage them to engage with appropriate crisis support services.
