Citation

Song IH, You JW, Kim JE, Kim JS, Kwon SW, Park JI. Crisis 2016; 38(3): 195-201.

Affiliation

National Chuncheon Hospital, Chuncheon, Republic of Korea.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, International Association for Suicide Prevention, Publisher Hogrefe Publishing)

DOI

10.1027/0227-5910/a000434

PMID

27871186

Abstract

BACKGROUND: One of the critical measures in suicide prevention is promoting public awareness of crisis hotline numbers so that individuals can more readily seek help in a time of crisis. Although public service advertisements (PSA) may be effective in raising the rates of both awareness and use of a suicide hotline, few investigations have been performed regarding their effectiveness in South Korea, where the suicide rate is the highest among OECD countries. AIMS: The goal of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a television PSA campaign.

METHOD: We analyzed a database of crisis phone calls compiled by the Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare to track changes in call volume to a crisis hotline that was promoted in a TV campaign. We compared daily call counts for three periods of equal length: before, during, and after the campaign.

RESULTS: The number of crisis calls during the campaign was about 1.6 times greater than the number before or after the campaign. Relative to the number of suicide-related calls in the previous year, the number of calls during the campaign period surged, displaying a noticeable increase.

CONCLUSION: The findings confirmed that this campaign had a positive impact on call volume to the suicide hotline.

Language: en