Online peer-to-peer suicide prevention programs in youth and young adults: A systematic review

Suicidality poses a serious health issue and is the second most prevalent cause of death among the 15 to 25-year-olds worldwide. Online-peer counselling services seem to be a promising approach in the field of suicide prevention especially in this young population group. The aim of this systematic review is to identify evaluated online-peer counselling services for suicide prevention in youth and young adults and to present results concerning characteristics of users and peer counselors, implementation and efficacy in a collective and structured way. Overall 13 studies which met inclusion criteria could be identified.Two of the online peer counselling services are presented exemplarily in more detail. Generally, the current literature shows positive results concerning the implementation, the satisfaction and the efficacy. However, the studies exhibited methodological deficiencies in general. Thus, the results could be only regarded as preliminary. There is a need for more studies on online-peer counselling services for suicide prevention to be able to evaluate the benefits of these programs in a more differentiated way, e.g., concerning their target group outreach and efficacy.