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Suicide-related Tweets linked to national suicide rates

Those at risk for suicide may be identified through social media, according to research at Brigham Young University, where study researchers identified a link between Twitter data and age-adjusted suicide data by state.

"Suicide is preventable," Carl L. Hanson, PhD, MS, BS, associate professor of public health and director of the Master of Public Health Program at Brigham Young University, said in a press release. "Social media is one channel for monitoring those at risk for suicide and potentially doing something about it."

Between May 15, 2012, and Aug. 13, 2012, researchers gathered at-risk tweets using keywords and phrases drawn from suicide risk factors and grouped them by state; 37,717 at-risk tweets were identified from 28,088 unique users. Data were compared with national suicide rates from the CDC.

The number of suicide-related Twitter users was higher than researchers expected in the Midwest and West, and the opposite was true for Southern and Eastern states. According to researchers, there was a robust association between Twitter data and age-adjusted data for each state.

In Alaska, which has the nation's highest suicide rate, researchers identified 61 at-risk Twitter users; in Texas, a state with a slightly lower rate, more than 3,000 users were identified as at-risk for suicide.

"Provided that additional research studies corroborate the findings from the current study, public health priorities in suicide prevention should consider creating profiles of individuals that might lead to earlier detection of suicide ideation," researchers wrote. "These profiles might include characteristics such as common discussion topics, frequency of tweets, gender, etc."