First do no harm: Cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence for the impact of individual suicidality on the use of online health forums and support groups

Suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide, especially among the young. This study aims to disentangle the presumed causality between the use of online health forums or support groups and suicidality using a representative telephone survey and a two-wave online panel survey containing the same question wording. Cross-sectional data show positive correlations between suicidality and online health forum use, but not limited to the younger. Using longitudinal panel data and autoregressive models, a positive cross-lagged effect of suicidality on internet-based health forum use one month later was revealed. Despite the wide-spread notion that online health forums can increase suicidality the present study provides evidence for the preventive potential of accessible and helpful information online.