- Study focusing on former military personnel in U.S. where 22 veterans take their own lives every day
- Computer experts looking at social media interaction to reach out to patients before they harm themselves
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Data collected from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn is being used to help people who may be a suicide risk .
The study is focusing on former military personnel in the U.S. where 22 veterans take their own lives every day, an average of one every 65 minutes, according to a recent government report.
Doctors working on the Durkheim Project, which is supported by Facebook, are hoping that clues from social interaction will help care workers identify patients before they fatally harm themselves.
Social media: Computer experts are looking for clues about the use of Twitter and Facebook by people at risk of killing themselves
The research is a joint venture by the predictive analytics firm Patterns and Predictions and the Veterans Education and Research Association of Northern New England.
Last year, suicides among active members of the military reached 349, more than those killed on duty and experts believe the military culture makes those at risk less likely to ask for help or admit they need it.
Dr. Craig J. Bryan, associate director of the National Center for Veterans Studies at the University of Utah told NBC News: 'We do know factors that increase risk such as depression, but our best methods rely on individuals telling us,'
The Durkheim Project adviser, added: 'A lot of people who die by suicide don't tell people they're thinking of it, so the difficulty is trying to figure out if there are other indicators that go around this problem.'
Clues: Researchers are analysing data from Twitter, Facebook to discover people most at risk of suicide
The study put together three groups using 300 anonymous medical records from the Veterans Administration - patients who killed themselves, those under psychiatric care and those wanting treatment.
Common issues showed up - troubled relationships, debt, job loss, post-traumatic stress, health issues and alienation.
But computer experts discovered behaviour unique to patients who committed suicide by analysing the language in the medical reports.
Project director Chris Poulin told NBC that the project's consulting doctors who had treated veterans were surprised not at the common behaviours, but that a computer programme could detect often subtle clues from the medical reports
Investigation: Computer experts hope 100,000 volunteers will take part in the project to identify suicide risks among the military1
'The technology is trying to find the stories within the stories,' said Durkheim spokesman Gregory Peterson.
The computers were alerted by certain language used by the former military personal such as loneliness or agitation. Findings will not be published for some time but the project hopes to get 100,000 volunteers to take part.
Data will come from a variety of apps that will continuously upload the subjects' social media and mobile phone interactions.
The project accepts that to really know more about what pushes patients to suicide, the researchers have to wait for people to die.
Mr Poulin said: It's not a happy topic. I don't think we should back away from it just because it's taboo or so stressful, there's no negative intent there, no creepy objective. This is the cost of doing business in life-or-death research.'
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