Toward automatic risk assessment to support suicide prevention

Background: Suicide has been considered an important public health issue for years and is one of the main causes of death worldwide. Despite prevention strategies being applied, the rate of suicide has not changed substantially over the past decades. Suicide risk has proven extremely difficult to assess for medical specialists, and traditional methodologies deployed have been […]

Combining psychological theory with language models for suicide risk detection (IN Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EACL 2023, edited by A. Vlachos & I. Augenstein)

With the increased awareness of situations of mental crisis and their societal impact, online services providing emergency support are becoming commonplace in many countries. Computational models, trained on discussions between help-seekers and providers, can support suicide prevention by identifying at-risk individuals. However, the lack of domain-specific models, especially in low-resource languages, poses a significant challenge […]

An efficient landmark model for prediction of suicide attempts in multiple clinical settings

Growing evidence has shown that applying machine learning models to large clinical data sources may exceed clinician performance in suicide risk stratification. However, many existing prediction models either suffer from “temporal bias” (a bias that stems from using case-control sampling) or require training on all available patient visit data. Here, we adopt a “landmark model” […]

Implicit identification with death detects and predicts short-term suicide risk among adolescents discharged from the emergency room

Background Implicit identification with death, measured by the Death–Suicide-Implicit Association Test (D/S-IAT), has been found to predict long-term suicide risk among adolescents. However, previous studies did not examine the predictive utility of D/S-IAT on short-term suicide risk trajectories among adolescents, especially during the critical period following discharge from the emergency room (ER) due to suicide […]

Resting state EEG correlates of suicide ideation and suicide attempt

Suicide is a global phenomenon that impacts individuals, families, and communities from all income groups and all regions worldwide. While it can be prevented if personalized interventions are implemented, more objective and reliable diagnostic methods are needed to complement interview-based risk assessments. In this context, electroencephalography (EEG) might play a key role. We systematically reviewed […]

Suicide risk assessment and suicide risk management protocol for the Texas Youth Depression and Suicide Research Network

Introduction Suicide prevention research is a national priority, and national guidance includes the development of suicide risk management protocols (SRMPs) for the assessment and management of suicidal ideation and behavior in research trials. Few published studies describe how researchers develop and implement SRMPs or articulate what constitutes an acceptable and effective SRMP. Methods The Texas […]

Development and validation of a model for predicting the risk of suicide in patients with cancer

Objective: The objective of this study was to establish a nomogram model to predict SI in patients with cancer and further evaluate its performance. Method: This study was performed among 390 patients in oncology departments of Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University from April 2020 to January 2021. Of these, eligible patients who were diagnosed with cancer were […]

Assessment and management of suicide risk in primary care

Background: Risk assessment and management of suicidal patients is emphasized as a key component of care in specialist mental health services, but these issues are relatively unexplored in primary care services. Aims: To examine risk assessment and management in primary and secondary care in a clinical sample of individuals who were in contact with mental health services and […]

The effects of suicide ideation assessments on urges to self-harm and suicide

Background: Participants’ safety is the primary concern when conducting research with suicidal or potentially suicidal participants. The presence of suicide risk is often an exclusion criterion for research participants. Subsequently, few studies have examined the effects of research assessments on study participants’ suicidality. Aims: The purpose of this research was to examine the patterns of postassessment changes […]

Ethical issues relevant to the assessment of suicide risk in nonclinical research settings

Background: Our laboratory recently confronted this issue while conducting research with undergraduate students at the University of Waterloo (UW). Although our main objective was to examine cognitive and genetic features of individuals with schizotypal personality disorder (SPD), the study protocol also entailed the completion of various self-report measures to identify participants deemed at increased risk for […]

Crisis concept re-loaded? The recently described suicide-specific syndromes may help to better understand suicidal behavior and assess imminent suicide risk more effectively

Background: Despite of the decreasing suicide rates in many countries, suicide is still a major public health concern worldwide. Traditional suicide risk factors have limited clinical predictive value, as they provide little reliable information on the acute psychological processes leading to suicide. Aims: The aim of this analysis is to describe and compare the recently introduced two […]

Suicidal behavior on Axis VI: Clinical data supporting a sixth Axis for DSM-V

Background: Oquendo and colleagues (Oquendo, Baca-García, Mann, & Giner, 2008; Oquendo & Currier, 2009) recommend that DSM-V emphasize suicide risk assessment on a sixth axis, thereby increasing regularity of suicide risk assessments. Aims: We propose that evidence of nonredundancy with Axis V – Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) is one piece of data that can serve as […]

Improving risk assessment with suicidal patients: A preliminary evaluation of the clinical utility of the Scale for Impact of Suicidality-Management, Assessment and Planning of Care (SIS-MAP)

Background: Although a number of suicide-risk assessment tools are available to clinicians, the high levels of suicide still evident in society suggest a clear need for new strategies in order to facilitate the prevention of suicidal behaviors. Aims: The present study examined the utilization of a new structured clinical interview called the Scale for Impact of Suicidality […]

Evaluation of the reliability and validity of two clinician-judgment suicide risk assessment instruments

Background: This study evaluates the psychometric properties and factor structure of two clinician-judgment suicide risk assessment instruments–the Suicide Assessment Checklist developed by Yufit and the other developed by Rogers. Methods: As an archival study, 85 client records were obtained through a university psychology clinic. Results: Internal consistency was high for only one subscale of the Yufit checklist after […]

The adaptation of a measure of confidence in assessing, formulating, and managing suicide risk

Background: To date little has been done to evaluate the effectiveness of suicide risk formulation training. Aims: We aimed to investigate the psychometric properties of a new scale measuring clinicians’ confidence in assessing, formulating, and managing suicide risk. Method: A total of 128 mental health practitioners from an UK National Health Service Trust completed the scale. Of them, 85 from […]

A standard protocol for the clinical management of suicidal thoughts and behavior: Implications for the suicide prevention narrative

The last several decades have witnessed growing and converging evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCT’s) that an identifiable set of simple clinical management strategies are effective for those at risk for suicidal thinking and/or suicide attempts. The current article offers a brief review of clinical strategies supported by RCT’s targeting suicidality as “commonalities of treatments […]

Statewide assessment of North Carolina nurse practitioners’ knowledge of and attitudes toward suicide awareness and prevention: Protocol for a statewide mixed methods study

Background: Suicide is a major public health problem, which affects people of all ages and ethnicities. Despite being preventable, the rates of suicide have steadily climbed (more than a third) over the past 2 decades. Objective: Nurse practitioners (NPs) must be responsible for recognizing suicide risk and providing appropriate treatment referrals in addition to having […]

Exploring the risk of resulting in homicide and suicide in Spanish missing person cases

The study explores in depth the relationship between missing persons’ psychosocial and criminological characteristics/circumstances and violent-fatal outcomes (suicide and homicide). A relational analytical explicative study of 929 cases and controls was designed using a retrospective and stratified design. Data gathering was conducted through the content analysis of judicial and police information, as well as the […]

Analysis and evaluation of explainable artificial intelligence on suicide risk assessment

This study investigates the effectiveness of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) techniques in predicting suicide risks and identifying the dominant causes for such behaviours. Data augmentation techniques and ML models are utilized to predict the associated risk. Furthermore, SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) and correlation analysis are used to rank the importance of variables in predictions. Experimental […]

How is suicide risk assessed in healthcare settings in the UK? A systematic scoping review

A high proportion of people contact healthcare services in the 12 months prior to death by suicide. Identifying people at high-risk for suicide is therefore a key concern for healthcare services. Whilst there is extensive research on the validity and reliability of suicide risk assessment tools, there remains a lack of understanding of how suicide […]

Risk factors for serious suicide attempts: Difference between older and younger attempters in the emergency department

Objective: Suicide attempts of the older adults are known to be more serious than that of the younger adults. Despite its major social impact in South Korea, the behavioral mechanism of serious suicide attempt (SSA) in old people remains to be elucidated. Thus, we investigated the risk factors for SSA in older and younger suicide attempters […]

Factor structure and validation of the revised suicide crisis inventory in a Korean population

Objective Because of the exceptionally high suicide rates in South Korea, new assessment methods are needed to improve suicide prevention. The current study aims to validate the revised Suicide Crisis Inventory-2 (SCI-2), a self-report measure that assesses a cognitiveaffective pre-suicidal state in a Korean sample. Methods With data from 1,061 community adults in South Korea, […]

Saving lives by asking questions: Nurses’ experiences of suicide risk assessment in telephone counselling in primary health care

Aim: To explore nurses’ experiences of suicide risk assessment in telephone counselling (TC) in primary health care (PHC). Background: Globally, priority is given to developing suicide prevention work in PHC. However, suicide risk assessments in TC are not included in these interventions even though these are a common duty of nurses in PHC. More expertise […]