Chinese College Students' Cognitive Biases Toward Suicide Prevention and Associated Strategies to Improve Life Education.

Life education is an essential element of suicide prevention in colleges. However, the existing practice of life education in China may be insufficient to match the new spectrum of students' knowledge needs. The study exemplified the participants' responses to common suicide myths with a 3‐year follow‐up investigation (Study 1), and the optimal strategies individuals chose to manage the people in crisis in a hypothetical scenario (Study 2). The results revealed that generally, college students in China have mature cognitive attitudes toward suicide‐related issues, and have systematic structural representations of crisis intervention. However, there are some prominent cognitive biases, mainly focusing on concerns in the process of communication and evaluation, difficulty in considering suicide as a complex moral phenomenon, and insufficient awareness of problem orientation in crisis interventions. To match the students' new cognitive changes and modern education's higher moral requirements, the optimization direction should focus on the response to students' personalized cognitive reality by adding meta‐suicidology reflection, learning ethical reduction in case analysis, and cultivating problem‐solving skills. Summary: Suicide cognitive biases shown to be most common among first‐year college students in China include the ambivalent attitude toward the relationship between socioeconomic factors and suicidal ideation, the belief that suicide is selfish and the talking taboo.Students believe that giving hope (but without substantive advice) and reminding responsibility are the most effective strategies in crisis intervention.Life education in China should focus on debunking these specific cognitive biases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]