Developers of suicide prediction tool hope to increase prevention of suicidal behaviours
- After analysing 663 children for 12 years, a research team from Pittsburgh came up with a predictive scoring tool
- The tool correctly predicted suicidal behaviour in 87 per cent of cases
Suicide is an increasingly prominent public health issue, with rates rising across the United States and suicide ranking as the second leading cause of death for Americans aged 15 to 34. But ask an expert to predict who is most at risk, and they’ll only be able to give you an educated guess.
In fact, an analysis of 50 years of research on suicidal thoughts and attempts found medical professionals’ ability to predict suicidal behaviour is only slightly better than chance.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh are hoping to change that with a new predictive scoring tool they’ve developed. In a study published in JAMA Psychiatry, they showed the tool correctly predicted suicidal behaviour in 87 per cent of cases.
More studies are needed to verify its reliability, but it’s a start, says Nadine Melhem, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of psychiatry at Pitt’s School of Medicine. “We want to equip clinicians with something that gives them more confidence in their ability to predict suicidal behaviour in a patient.”
It’s a goal many researchers are pursuing, with attempts involving everything from scanning patients’ brains to analysing their social media data.
