Florida mom discovers suicide tips on YouTube video

TAMPA, Florida (WFLA) – Warning: this story mentions suicide and may disturb some readers.

A mother warns parents to better monitor the online activity of their children after finding a disturbing video that seems to give kids instructions to hurt themselves.

Dr. Free Hess, pediatrician and mother in Gainesville, posted the video on her blog PediMom.com after seeing it on YouTube. Hess said the video has appeared twice on YouTube and YouTube Kids since July.

"Looking at the comments, it's been a while since people reported it eight months ago," Hess told CBS News.

The instructions are in a 9-second clip that is pasted between the clips of the famous Nintendo Splatoon game.

"Do not forget, children, sideways to attract attention, long time to get results. Put an end to this," said a man claiming to cut his forearm.

The man is identified as YouTuber Filthy Frank, who calls himself "the embodiment of everything that a person should not be". It has more than 6.2 million subscribers. CBS News reports that there is no evidence to suggest that Frank was involved in creating the tampered video.

Hess told YouTube about the video. The company said that it violated the guidelines of its community and removed it.

A YouTube representative told the network that the company was working hard "to make sure YouTube is not used to encourage unsafe behavior."

"We rely on both user sensing and smart sensing technology to report this content to our reviewers," said the representative. "Every quarter, we remove millions of videos and channels that violate our rules and most of these videos before they are seen.We are always working on improving our systems and removing more fast breaking content, progress in a quarterly report and give users a dashboard showing the status of the videos they have reported to us. "

Hess said she had been given a mission to look for this type of danger after finding an increase in the suicide rate among children in her emergency room in recent years. She told the network that she had reported seven more disturbing videos on YouTube Kids since they had been viewed.

"I had to stop, but I could have continued," said Hess. "Once you start looking at it, things get darker and weird, I do not understand how they do not get caught."

If you are considering suicide or if you are worried about someone who might be, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) to contact a local crisis center. You can also send a text message to the crisis text line by sending a message to 741741.