Research Symposium

BIO

Ava Polaszek is a senior at Florida State University pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Psychology with a minor in Commercial Entrepreneurship. She is from Tampa, Florida and is currently enrolled in the Honors College. She works as a research assistant in the Joiner Lab where she assists with qualitative interviews, participant recruitment, and data cleaning. She also helps to maintain IRB documentation and performing virtual reality research methodologies while also learning how to complete suicide risk assessments. She plans to attend medical school after graduation to pursue a career as a physician while continuing to integrate research and clinical work.

A New Realm in Suicide Prevention: A Validation Study

Abstract

Suicide remains a leading cause of death and suicide rates in the United States continue to rise. Virtual reality (VR) offers a novel approach for studying suicide risk in a controlled and ethical environment. However, past VR suicide studies relied on VR scenarios from pre-existing commercial games and faced several challenges, including a limited representation of suicide methods and an inability to study decision-making processes. This study aims to validate four newly developed VR suicide scenarios – jumping, cutting, shooting, and overdosing – that have been designed to better reflect real-world methods of suicide in comparison to past VR suicide studies.

Preliminary data from 42 participants randomized across scenarios via a balanced Latin Square Design has been collected. A one-way repeated measures ANOVA examined the perceived realism of each scenario. Results indicated that the shooting scenario was perceived as significantly more realistic than the cutting scenario (b = 1.09, t(31) = 3.19, p = 0.016). Additionally, the difference between the shooting and overdosing scenario approached statistical significance, with the shooting scenario perceived as more realistic (b = 0.78, t(31) = 2.44, p = 0.0898) after controlling for Type 1 error. Finally, capability for suicide, a key construct from the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide showed mixed results in predicting VR suicide. Fearlessness about death (an established component of capability) did not predict VR suicide, a novel measure, fearlessness about suicide did (b = 0.16, SE = .08, p = .039).

Keywords: Suicide Prevention, Virtual Reality, Interpersonal Theory of Suicide