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  • Review Article
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The use of advanced technology and statistical methods to predict and prevent suicide

Nature Reviews Psychology volume 2, pages 347–359 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

In the past decade, two themes have emerged across suicide research. First, according to meta-analyses, the ability to predict and prevent suicidal thoughts and behaviours is weaker than would be expected for the size of the field. Second, review and commentary papers propose that technological and statistical methods (such as smartphones, wearables, digital phenotyping and machine learning) might become solutions to this problem. In this Review, we aim to strike a balance between the pessimistic picture presented by these meta-analyses and the optimistic picture presented by review and commentary papers about the promise of advanced technological and statistical methods to improve the ability to understand, predict and prevent suicide. We divide our discussion into two broad categories. First, we discuss the research aimed at assessment, with the goal of better understanding or more accurately predicting suicidal thoughts and behaviours. Second, we discuss the literature that focuses on prevention of suicidal thoughts and behaviours. Ecological momentary assessment, wearables and other technological and statistical advances hold great promise for predicting and preventing suicide, but there is much yet to do.

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Acknowledgements

This publication was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01MH124899 to E.M.K., C.R.G. and R.T.L. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway, NJ, USA

    Evan M. Kleiman

  2. Department of Psychology, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, USA

    Catherine R. Glenn

  3. Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Richard T. Liu

  4. Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    Richard T. Liu

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E.M.K. wrote the initial draft of the article. C.R.G. and R.T.L. provided substantive contributions to the revisions of all drafts. All authors discussed the content and reviewed and/or edited the manuscript before submission.

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Kleiman, E.M., Glenn, C.R. & Liu, R.T. The use of advanced technology and statistical methods to predict and prevent suicide. Nat Rev Psychol 2, 347–359 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-023-00175-y

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