Promoting suicide prevention action planning in the community: A randomised controlled trial guided by the Bystander Intervention Model

The intervention is Bystander Intervention Model (BIM)-informed suicide prevention education material. This material is a PDF factsheet teaching participants about suicide risk factors, warning signs and protective factors and teaching them how to intervene. This is provided in the online questionnaire of this study. Participants are provided with a link to the online questionnaire in the study advertisement. The questionnaire presents the following information in order: demographics, education PDF, hypothetical scenario of someone presenting with suicide risk, an open question asking how they would respond, Bystander Intervention Model Performance Scale (BIMPS), Manipulation Check Questions asking how much the education information aligned with the BIM, debrief page. The total questionnaire takes approx. 30 min to complete. As stated, the intervention is only delivered once during the overall questionnaire. Adherence is assessed through timing how long participants spend on reading the page and asking a 5 point scale question: 'I read the factsheet carefully and in full' - 'strong disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, strongly agree'. This factsheet was designed specifically for this study based on evidence-based, best practice guidelines in suicide risk assessment and intervention. The factsheet is 8 pages - mostly graphics and bullet points - taking approx 10 min to read. Participants are asked to provide a typed response of how they would respond to a hypothetical scenario of suicide risk after reading the sheet. Their response is then compared to a checklist of behaviours based on best practice guidelines. The total number of appropriate responses are then totalled and entered into SPSS as a total score on the 'Risk Assessment Ability Checklist' and 'Protective Action Ability Checklist' and differences between groups compared.