Safe and supportive online spaces provide an opportunity for people to talk about suicidal feelings openly and without stigma, and to get help and support. The right response, at the right time, can be lifesaving.

Before You Act

Community administrators and moderators should exercise great caution before contacting police or emergency services in response to self-harm or suicidal content. Contacting law enforcement can result in serious unintended harm, particularly for users who are Black, Indigenous, disabled, LGBTQIA+, neurodivergent, or from other marginalised communities. In many cases, police involvement escalates risk rather than mitigates it. Always consider alternative support-based interventions whenever possible.

Never attempt to collect, solicit, or pressure users to disclose identifying information such as their real name, address, phone number, or location for the purpose of alerting emergency services. This can create a significant breach of trust, escalate distress, and potentially violate platform rules or local laws. You should only work with information already available to you through the platform or past voluntary disclosures. Prioritise safeguarding the user’s privacy and autonomy while offering support and signposting to crisis services.

Best Practice Guides

The guide below sets out a recommended best-practice approach to responding to suicidal posts online. It is designed for community managers, moderators or individuals running or facilitating a community online for adults, and will help you provide a safe and supportive response to someone in crisis online.

This document has been developed through consultation with leading experts in online communities, mental health and suicide, as well as community members with experience of seeking support for suicidal feelings online.

Download Responding to suicidal content online: Best-practice guidelines

See also: The Support for Suicidal Individuals on Social and Digital Media free toolkit – developed by the staff of the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline to help digital community managers and social media platforms establish safety policies for helping individuals in suicidal crisis.

See also: The Trevor Project (focus is for LGBTQ+ young people whom you personally know)

Reddit Moderator Guidance

Reddit’s guidance for moderators has excellent community resources for dealing with self-harm and suicidal content.

• What do I do if someone talks about seriously hurting themselves or is considering suicide?
• r/SuicideWatch > hotlines

Community Management Resources

Conversations Matter is a practical online resource to support safe and effective community discussions about suicide.

• When someone is thinking about suicide
• Core principles for guiding community conversations
• Group discussions about suicide prevention

Developer Resources

Koko’s Suicide Prevention Kit provides free resources for everyone in your online community — right when they need it the most. Integration is quick and easy. Their Online Suicide Prevention Kit has two components: A native library (Python, Ruby, Go, PHP) that detects high risk terms and phrases, and an embed that links to free resources and online interventions.

They also maintain an evidence-based keyword list you can use to review terms you’re seeing.