An Automated Tool to Detect Suicidal Susceptibility from Social Media Posts

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 1.4 million individuals died by suicide in 2022. This means that one person dies by suicide every 20 seconds. Globally, suicide ranks as the 10th leading cause of death, while it ranks second for young people aged 15-29. In the year 2022, it was estimated that about 10.5 million suicide attempts occurred. The WHO suggests that alongside each completed suicide, there are many individuals who make attempts. Today, social media is a place where people share their feelings, such as happiness, sadness, anger, and love. This helps us understand how they are thinking or what they might do. This study takes advantage of this opportunity and focuses on developing an automated tool to find if someone may be thinking about harming themselves. It is developed based on the Suicidal-Electra model. We collected datasets of social media posts, processed them, and used them to train and fine-tune the model. Upon evaluating the refined model with a testing dataset, we consistently observed outstanding results. The model demonstrated an impressive accuracy rate of 93% and a commendable F1 score of 0.93. Additionally, we developed an API enabling seamless integration with third-party platforms, enhancing its potential for implementation to address the growing concern of rising suicide rates.