Suicide Possibility Scale Detection via Sina Weibo Analytics: Preliminary Results

Abstract

Suicide, as an increasingly prominent social problem, has attracted widespread social attention in the mental health field. Traditional suicide clinical assessment and risk questionnaires lack timeliness and proactivity, and high-risk groups often conceal their intentions, which is not conducive to early suicide prevention. In this study, we used machine-learning algorithms to extract text features from Sina Weibo data and built a suicide risk-prediction model to predict four dimensions of the Suicide Possibility Scale—hopelessness, suicidal ideation, negative self-evaluation, and hostility—all with model validity of 0.34 or higher. Through this method, we can detect the symptoms of suicidal ideation in a more detailed way and improve the proactiveness and accuracy of suicide risk prevention and control.