Restricting cognitive access to suicide

Development and proof-of-concept testing of a cognitive restriction intervention.

This project intends to design and test an intervention that limits cognitive access to hanging as a suicide method, based on theoretical evidence that this may be a safe and effective approach. The cross-disciplinary team will develop a novel and ethically sound public health intervention and test attitudes.

This highly novel project will accelerate intervention development. It builds the co-applicants’ interventional work countering self-harm suggestion using careful safeguards, synthesises multiple disciplines and has a strong theoretical underpinning. The initial focus will be on middle-aged men to establish proof-of-concept. The project plans to develop, using life-course model and expertise in public mental health, cognitive neuroscience, ethics, and health communication, a cognitive restriction intervention. Following this, the team will discuss three versions of this in a multidisciplinary workshop of the UCL Special Interest Group (SIG) in Self-Harm and Suicide, held in October 2024, and agree on one version perceived to be valid, inclusive and ethically sound.

Following ethics approval, the project will recruit a general population sample of non-suicidal middle-aged men to assess the intervention’s impact on attitudes to death, using appropriate screening and safeguards as per previous UCL experimental work on self-harm suggestion. Presentation of findings on proof-of-concept and acceptability will inform proposed revisions of the intervention as part of a follow-on larger grant application.