Kaleidoscope - Volume 218 , Issue 1

Tracy, Derek K.; Joyce, Dan W.; Albertson, Dawn N.; Shergill, Sukhwinder S.

Abstract

Predicting future suicide attempts is a challenging area for psychiatrists. Even well-established individual risk factors tend to be quite weak predictors, and most assessment tools have been shown to add little or no value to a comprehensive clinical assessment. A lack of adequately sized data-sets and limited sample sizes are often blamed. Chen et al applied a machine learning approach to a national registry of over half a million psychiatric in- and out-patient attendances between 2011 and 2012.Reference Chen, Zhang-James, Barnett, Lichtenstein, Jokinen and D'Onofrio1 Anxiety disorders (about 20%), major depressive disorders (17%) and substance use disorders (14%) were the most common presentations. An impressive 425 candidate predictors were extracted from electronic records covering clinical, demographic and socioeconomic factors. In total, 80% of the sample was used to train the algorithm – which looked for suicide attempts and deaths within 30 and 90 days – which was then tested on the remaining 20%.

Citation

Tracy, D. K., Joyce, D. W., Albertson, D. N., & Shergill, S. S. (2021). Kaleidoscope - Volume 218 , Issue 1. British Journal of Psychiatry, 218(1), 69-70. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2020.239

• Journal Article Type: Editorial
• Online Publication Date: Dec 28, 2020
• Publication Date: 2021-01
• Deposit Date: Jun 21, 2023
• Journal: The British Journal of Psychiatry
• Print ISSN: 0007-1250
• Electronic ISSN: 1472-1465
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 218
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 69-70
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2020.239
• Keywords: Psychiatry and Mental health
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/10881700
• Publisher URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry/article/kaleidoscope/F89BA27382A7068977003D76FC72920A
• Additional Information: Copyright: Copyright © The Authors 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Royal College of Psychiatrists