Youth ’s Online Activity May Point to Subsequent Suicidal Behaviors

The types of online content that youth explore and the messages they share with others may help identify those most likely to be at high risk of a suicide attempt or self-harm, astudy inJAMA Network Open suggests. The greatest risk was found among youth who engaged in multiple types of online risk factors, such as expressing feelings of prolonged hopelessness and participating in cyberbullying.“The findings of this study suggest that many discrete types of risk factors are identifiable from online data and associated with subsequent youth suicide-related behavior,” wrote Steven A. Sumner, M.D., M.Sc., of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and colleagues.Sumner and colleagues analyzed data drawn from more than 2,600 U.S. schools participating in online safety monitoring using a program calledBark. This software monitors and sends alerts to school administrators and parents about content “threatening to the health and well-being of students, such as messages about self-harm, suicidal ideation, online predators, bullying, or threats of violence,” they wrote.Between July 27, 2019, and May 26, 2020, the Bark online safety tool sent a severe suicide/self-harm alert requiring notification of school administrators for 227 youth. The researchers compared the online behaviors of these youth with those of five controls each (youth enrolled in the same school who participated in a similar volume of online activity) to examine whether there were differences between the...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Bark cyberbullying depression hopelessness JAMA Network Open online behaviors self-harm suicide youth Source Type: research