Mental disorder and suicidal ideation detection from social media using deep neural networks

Abstract Depression and suicidal ideation are global reasons for life-threatening injury and death. Mental disorders have increased especially among young people in recent years, and early detection of those cases can prevent suicide attempts. Social media platforms provide users with an anonymous space to interact with others, making them a secure environment to discuss their mental disorders. This paper proposes a solution to detect depression/suicidal ideation using natural language processing and deep learning techniques. We used Transformers and a unique model to train the proposed model and applied it to three different datasets: SuicideDetection, CEASEv2.0, and SWMH. The proposed model is evaluated using the accuracy, precision, recall, and ROC curve. The proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art in the SuicideDetection and CEASEv2.0 datasets, achieving F1 scores of 0.97 and 0.75, respectively. However, in the SWMH data set, the proposed model is 4% points behind the state-of-the-art precision providing the F1 score of 0.68. In the real world, this project could help psychologists in the early detection of depression and suicidal ideation for a more efficient treatment. The proposed model achieves state-of-the-art performance in two of the three datasets, so they could be used to develop a screening tool that could be used by mental health professionals or individuals to assess their own risk of suicide. This could lead to early intervention and treatment, which could save lives.