College students' responses to suicidal communications using the revised suicide intervention response inventory.

Abstract

This study assessed undergraduate college students' ability to recognize facilitative responses on the revised Suicide Intervention Response Inventory (SIRI-2) by adopting an empathic mindset. Students were exposed to an imagining prompt, an observing prompt, or no prompt, based on experimental designs in the empathy literature. Empathy was hypothesized to promote recognition of facilitative responses on the SIRI-2 by improving the scores of college students who were untrained in suicide intervention. One hundred seventy six participants, age 18 to 24, volunteered. Participants were randomly assigned to three prompt groups. Participants in the control (i.e., no prompt) group completed the SIRI-2. Participants in the imagining group received a verbal prompt to consider how the suicidal person, described in the SIRI-2, could be feeling and then completed the SIRI-2. Participants in the observing group received a verbal prompt to consider only the information conveyed by the suicidal person and then completed the SIRI-2. One hundred fifty-eight valid test packets were included in the data analysis. A 2 x 3 analysis of variance with gender by experimental prompt conditions was performed on the SIRI-2 scores. Results showed no significant main effect for prompt condition or interaction for gender by prompt condition. A gender difference was obtained with women receiving better SIRI-2 scores than men (better scores on the SIRI-2 are numerically lower scores).