Online disclosure of suicide method: What can online posts tell us about suicidal planning?

Abstract

Rates of self-disclosure of, and subsequently formal help-seeking for, suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) remains low. However, online discussions of STBs have become increasingly prevalent, creating potential opportunities to identify those at potentially elevated suicide risk (i.e., engaging in suicidal planning). This study used linguistic analysis to examine online STB discussions to identify posts that reference a suicide method, as well as the lethality and timeframe of the identified suicide method. A corpus of 3974 posts from the online forum Reddit SuicideWatch were extracted for data analysis. Approximately one-fifth of analyzed posts mentioned a suicide method; over 35% were classified as severe risk with regard to lethality and almost 70% discussed a suicide method yet to occur. Analyses demonstrated that three categories of words - Substances, Physical, and Past Focus - were associated with increased odds of the presence of a suicide method in a post, whereas five different word categories were associated with a decrease in odds of method presence; most notably was the use of Social words. Together, results support the utility of this approach in detecting discussions of a suicide method. However, they may be less fruitful in distinguishing planning severity among posts including method discussions.