Molly Adrian, PhD, and Aaron Lyon, PhD, have received funding from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to examine the extent to which student-generated social media data provide the information needed to accurately predict suicide risk in high schoolers, compared to more traditional paper-and-pencil screening approaches. The Assessment of Suicide and Self-injury to Enhance School Safety project is adapting an existing software platform originally used to improve identification of suicide risk in veterans.

In addition to updating the machine learning algorithms to accurately predict suicide risk, the investigators will improve the usability and contextual appropriateness of the clinician-facing interface by evaluating factors in the school setting that directly affect technology adoption and implementation at scale. As a universal approach to suicide risk identification, strategic monitoring of social media carries considerable potential for public health impact to decrease adolescent suicide rates in the United States. Additional investigators include Dave Atkins, PhD; Ryan Calo, JD (law); Elizabeth McCauley, PhD; Megan Moreno, MD, MS Ed, MPH (pediatrics and health services); Mike Pullman, PhD; Emma Spiro, PhD (information school and sociology).