Detecting Suicide and Self-Harm Discussions Among Opioid Substance Users on Instagram Using Machine Learning.

ABSTRACT: Background: Suicide and substance use disorder (SUD) pose serious public health challenges among young adults in the United States. Increasing social media use among these populations can be leveraged as an alternative method to detect characteristics of suicide-related topics and behavior among substance users. Objective: To detect and characterize suicide and self-harm related conversations co-occurring with SUD posts and comments on the popular social media platform Instagram. Methods: This study used big data and machine learning approaches to collect and classify Instagram posts containing 632 controlled substance-related hashtags. Posts were first classified for online drug diversion topics and then filtered to detect suicide and mental health discussions. Posts

SUBMITTER: Purushothaman V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8200460 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature