How can we leverage technology for better suicide prevention?

Technology hasn’t yet played the role many expected it would in helping to prevent suicides. But leveraging digital health and machine learning in three areas believed to contribute to suicide deaths could go far in helping save people’s lives, says a “Viewpoint” column published in JAMA Psychiatry.

“The current, limited technological advances in suicide prevention do not reflect a failure of technology or big data, but rather a need to realign research aims and clinical use with prevention research that address the upstream suicide risk that precedes suicide crisis,” wrote psychiatrist John Torous, MD, and clinical psychologist Rheeda Walker, PhD. As rates of suicide attempts and deaths have recently increased to 50-year highs, the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention identified three health care gaps that contribute to suicide death:

• Failing to proactively identify suicide risk.
• Not acting efficiently for safety.
• Inadequately providing supportive contacts for people at risk of suicide. […]

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