Can Smartphones Predict Suicide?

WOULDN’T THAT BE GREAT –

Sept. 30, 2022 – But her life on the outside was as unsettled as ever, she said in an interview, with a stack of unpaid bills and no permanent home. It was easy to slide back into suicidal thoughts. For fragile patients, the weeks after discharge from a psychiatric facility are a notoriously difficult period, with a suicide rate around 15 times the national rate, according to one study.

This time, however, Ms. Cruz, 29, left the hospital as part of a vast research project which attempts to use advances in artificial intelligence to do something that has eluded psychiatrists for centuries: to predict who is likely to attempt suicide and when that person is likely to attempt it, and then, to intervene.

On her wrist, she wore a Fitbit programmed to track her sleep and physical activity. On her smartphone, an app was collecting data about her moods, her movement and her social interactions. Each device was providing a continuous stream of information to a team of researchers on the 12th floor of the William James Building, which houses Harvard’s psychology department.