Exploring the therapeutic and nontherapeutic affordances of social media use by young adults with lived experience of self-harm or suicidal ideation: A scoping review

Abstract

Help-seeking use of social media continues to demonstrate a therapeutic potential for improving health outcomes. This scoping review explores the outcomes associated with the use of social media by young adults experiencing suicidal ideation. It incorporates a therapeutic affordance framework. A meta-synthesis method was applied to elicit themes related to therapeutic affordances from each of the included articles. The five therapeutic affordances that emerge from the thematic analysis are as follows: (a) connection, the practicality of being able to connect with peers or professionals, (b) exploration, the ability to explore and gather information for oneself or others, (c) narration, the a..