ArticleThe Lancet regional health. Southeast Asia2025
Search engine ads for suicide prevention: analysis of engagement from Indonesia relative to Australia, the USA, and the medical industry standards.
Article in The Lancet regional health. Southeast Asia, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: Suicide is a global public health issue, with over 75% of deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), where access to mental health services is often limited. In Indonesia, where stigma is high and professional support scarce, there is a critical need for scalable, non-traditional approaches to reach individuals at risk. One such approach is using online search engine advertisements to engage individuals searching for suicide-related content and encourage help-seeking. Methods: This study analysed data from an online Google Ads campaign conducted in Indonesia in March 2023, targeting individuals searching for suicide-related keywords. The campaign was co-designed with local experts and people with lived experience. We compared its engagement and cost-effectiveness to similar campaigns previously conducted in the USA and Australia. The primary outcome was total engagement rate (engagements/impressions), and the secondary outcome was effective cost per engagement (adjusted for purchasing power and inflation). Findings: The Indonesian campaign achieved an engagement rate of 11.04%, which was 18 times higher than the US campaign (0.61%) and 15 times higher than the Australian campaign (0.72%). It also had an effective cost per engagement five times lower than those in the USA and Australia. All campaigns outperformed industry standards for health and medical advertising. Interpretation: Search engine advertising is a rapid, cost-effective, and scalable tool to connect individuals in Indonesia with suicide prevention support. These findings underscore the importance of context-specific research in LMICs, where interventions may have greater impact than predicted from high-income country data. Funding: The study was funded by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australian-Indonesian Institute (AII2020322), an NHMRC Investigator Grant (GNT2034904), Suicide Prevention Australia Innovation Grant, and the Lynch Family Foundation Research Fellowship in Global Health Equity.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.