Tracking Individuals at High-Risk for Suicide:
The Development of a Predictive Model through Social Media Channels
Megan Rich, Emma Hunt, Katie Meek, Christophe Giraud-Carrier
Computational Health Science Research Group,
Brigham Young University
DESCRIPTION
During 2012, an estimated 804,000 suicides occurred
worldwide, representing 11.4 per 100,000 population
(World Health Organization, 2012).
FOR UTAH:
● Suicide is the 8th leading cause of death in Utah
(average of 525 deaths a year).
● Utah’s Suicide rate has been consistently higher
than the national rate for over a decade.
Social media is a communication channel where it is
possible to monitor self-expressed online indicators
of suicide ideation in order to create a predictive
model, with the ultimate goal of preventing suicides.
PURPOSE
To create a computer-based predictive model to
analyse the social media networks of individuals at
risk for committing or attempting suicide, ultimately
to immediately connect those in need with
appropriate health care resources and prevent
suicides from being attempted or occurring.
MEMBER BENEFITS
The consequences of suicide include not only the
loss of individual’s life, but also an increased
potential for suicide clusters. .
The creation of a proactive predictive model will
ultimately identify individuals at risk and connect
them with appropriate health care professionals and
resources.
RESEARCH PLAN
● Collect data to establish a known set of social media
profiles of those at risk of committing or attempting
suicide.
● Collect data by mining social media for posts containing
known suicide buzz words and cues. .
● Train available NLP sentiment models and algorithms
on a selection of statuses and original posts in order to
determine toxic thought patterns, indications of
planned attempts, etc.
● Create and test predictive model.
● After an effective model is found, work with
psychologists to find effective and safe ways to help
those individuals identified as at risk.
RELATED WORK
● Brigham Young University (BYU) Computational
Health Science Research Collaborative has
previously studied suicide via computer science
techniques to mine big data.
● Past studies by the collaborative have identified
at-risk suicide tweets using big data techniques,
revealing a strong correlation between state
Twitter-derived data and the actual state
age-adjusted suicide data as reported by the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention. (Jashinsky et al.,
2015).
● Together this suggests that social media is
commonly used as a platform for expressing suicidal
thoughts and feelings (Robinson et al., 2015).