Here’s our latest publication on Competency-based training for young men with suicide risk.
Purpose: Traditional masculine norms of self-reliance and emotional restraint deter help-seeking, contributing to higher suicide rates in men. Young men online adhering to these norms face elevated risk, worsened by negative digital experiences. Interventions emphasizing masculine-valued physical competency may aid suicide prevention.
Methods: A two-arm, four-wave randomized waitlist-controlled trial recruited men aged 17–30 at suicide risk from online forums. Participants received either online social work (OSW) alone or OSW with a three-month competency-based physical training module (CbM) involving high-intensity circuit training. Outcomes were tracked for five months.
Results: The CbM group showed significant, lasting gains in self-esteem, physical self-perception, and sport engagement. Suicidal ideation stabilized, with a 95% higher likelihood of improvement versus controls. Perceived physical mastery, not objective fitness, appeared key to mental health benefits. Competency-based physical training module also showed higher engagement.
Conclusions: Combining competency-based physical training with OSW provides a scalable, gender-sensitive approach to reducing suicide risk among young men.
Doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/10497315261441540
I’ll be honest: when we first considered recruiting young men with suicide risk through LIHKG, I wasn’t sure it would work. It is a vibrant but unpredictable online space, where anonymity is the norm and conversations can shift quickly in tone, direction, and intensity.
But that was also what made the recruitment process so memorable. With the help of our student helper Chris, who drafted and posted the messages in locally familiar and colloquial wording, we were able to reach participants in a way that felt both accessible and respectful. We also took great care to safeguard anonymity and confidentiality throughout, including one-to-one Zoom sessions where we explained participants’ rights and made clear that participation was entirely voluntary. Very grateful for their trust in our research team. 🫡
I am deeply honoured to have been part of this GRF project, and grateful to Prof. Frances YW Law for the conceptualisation and supervision that guided the work from start to finish. It took an enormous amount of time and collective effort to bring this study to completion, and I also want to thank Byron for making the work possible.
The study itself offers important randomized trial evidence that a competency-based physical training intervention can reduce suicidal ideation and self-harm risk among young men, beyond treatment as usual. More broadly, it points to physical competence as a potentially modifiable protective factor in suicide prevention, and opens up meaningful implications for gender-responsive and strength-based social work practice.
For social work practitioners or researchers, I hope this research could bring out an important message: it would be a time for us to prompt reflection on how suicide prevention can move beyond risk management alone to also cultivate competence, agency, and protective strengths in ways that are meaningful to young men.
Comments are closed