Facebook Adding Suicide Prevention Tools

Facebook’s newest feature may be one of its
most important yet. Yesterday, the company
announced the development of new tools to
report and provide varying levels of support to
those who may be contemplating self-injury or
suicide. These tools will be rolling out
to Facebook members over the coming months.
When the feature goes live, you’ll be able to flag
posts from friends on Facebook that contain
worrying threats about self-harm or mental
distress. Those reports can be sent either to a
friend of the friend (to help spur immediate real-
world action) or to Facebook itself. Either way, a
team of professionals will be on hand to review
the reports 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to
prioritize the most serious ones and send help
those who need it.
If the threat of harm is immediate, Facebook will
encourage you, the person making the report, to
call emergency services. Facebook will also give
you the option to call or message your friend to
lend your immediate support, or to talk directly
with a trained professional at a suicide hotline.
In any case, Facebook will prompt your friend
with information about support and resources the
next time they log in to the social network . This
includes contact information for the National
Suicide Prevention Lifeline , an option to reach out
personally to a friend and tips for working through
their feelings. The response mechanism was
developed in conjunction with mental health
organizations like Forefront, Now Matters Now,
the National Suicide Prevention
Lifeline, Save.org and others.
There’s little doubt that Facebook’s new tools
will be a great help in getting resources to those
who need it the most. You can expect to see the
new feature rolling out in the U.S. “over the next
couple of months,” with an improvement in
international tools to follow. To learn more, read
the full post on the topic by the Facebook Safety
team .