Facebook Launches Suicide Prevention Tool

After been the target of criticism in the past for a perceived lack of sensitivity against users, finally Facebook to began rolling out a set of tools that becoming a new way to privately contact a friend you might consider a suicide risk. Users can now report posts to Facebook that seem to show someone suffering from suicidal thoughts. Further a third party will review reported posts, then decide whether to reach out to the user with advice and support.

If Facebook contacts a user, then users will see this popup:

It lets the user know that "a friend thinks you might be going through something difficult and asked us to look at your recent post." Only the user can see this popup and everything that follows.
Several options follow:

"You're not alone, we do this for many people every month," this is the notification. 

User can then choose to talk to someone, either a friend or a helpline worker or get tips and support by the facebook.

For this set of alerts, Facebook partnered with mental health organizations to make sure it was using the right language to talk to potentially suicidal people. The organizations include the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, Forefront, Save.org and Now Matters Now.

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