Changes in Attitudes After Suicide Prevention Media Campaigns in Three Norwegian Regions

In a recent Norwegian regional suicide prevention media campaign, we found small and inconclusive results regarding changes in attitudes to suicide and help-seeking. In this exploratory study we add the data from two other Norwegian regional campaigns, aiming to generate clearer results through a larger sample.

We compared the attitudes to suicide, mental illness and help-seeking before and after a media campaign carried out in the three regions of Mid-, West-, and South-Norway at different time periods in 2022 and 2023. In total, 3234 adults sampled from the general population and stratified according to sex, age, and geographical location participated in two surveys before and after the campaigns.

When analyzing the entire sample, there was no overall change in attitudes to suicide, mental illness and help-seeking from pre to post campaign. In the subgroup of men who had noticed the campaign (n = 644, 10% of the sample), however, there was a significant reduction in two out of ten undesirable attitudes to suicide. No such changes were seen in the female respondents who had noticed the campaign. For all the statistically significant changes, the effect sizes were small.

Although we found no overall change in attitudes after suicide preventive media campaigns, small changes, such as increased suicide preventive and mental health literacy, occurred in the male subgroup of those who have been exposed to the campaigns. Future suicide prevention media campaigns should consider targeting subgroups with elevated risk for suicide instead of the entire population. In addition, there are methodological aspects of the current exploratory study that should be investigated further.