scholarly journals Self-Harm Detection for Mental Health Chatbots

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saahil Deshpande ◽  
Jim Warren
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Emergency Situations ◽  
Text Input ◽  
Traditional Health ◽  
Mental Health Issues ◽  
Impressive Result ◽  
Self Harm ◽  
Positive Results

Chatbots potentially address deficits in availability of the traditional health workforce and could help to stem concerning rates of youth mental health issues including high suicide rates. While chatbots have shown some positive results in helping people cope with mental health issues, there are yet deep concerns regarding such chatbots in terms of their ability to identify emergency situations and act accordingly. Risk of suicide/self-harm is one such concern which we have addressed in this project. A chatbot decides its response based on the text input from the user and must correctly recognize the significance of a given input. We have designed a self-harm classifier which could use the user’s response to the chatbot and predict whether the response indicates intent for self-harm. With the difficulty to access confidential counselling data, we looked for alternate data sources and found Twitter and Reddit to provide data similar to what we would expect to get from a chatbot user. We trained a sentiment analysis classifier on Twitter data and a self-harm classifier on the Reddit data. We combined the results of the two models to improve the model performance. We got the best results from a LSTM-RNN classifier using BERT encoding. The best model accuracy achieved was 92.13%. We tested the model on new data from Reddit and got an impressive result with an accuracy of 97%. Such a model is promising for future embedding in mental health chatbots to improve their safety through accurate detection of self-harm talk by users.

scholarly journals Mental Health Issues in the COVID-19 Pandemic and Responses in Bangladesh: View Point of Media Reporting

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mir Nabila Ashraf ◽  
Hannah Jennings ◽  
Nantu Chakma ◽  
Noshin Farzana ◽  
Md. Saimul Islam ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Framework Analysis ◽  
Emergency Situations ◽  
Mental Health Issues ◽  
Resource Setting

Background: The negative impact of COVID-19 on mental health has been reported by media throughout the world, although this role is not well-understood in low-and middle-income countries (LMIC). We examined the reporting of mental health issues during the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh and initiatives undertaken to support mental health reported from the viewpoint of media.Methods: We reviewed articles published in 10 local newspapers, including seven Bangla and three English newspapers, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. News topics were identified through discussions among the team members, with searches across online newspapers and portals. Data extrapolated from newspapers were documented in an Excel spreadsheet. A mixed-method approach was used following a framework analysis for analyzing data. Recurring issues and commonly emerging topics were generated from the data. Descriptive statistics were applied for analyzing quantitative data.Results: Between March 2020 and March 2021, we have identified 201 reports on mental health issues including 45 reports (22.4%) focused on stress due to the associated financial crisis, unemployment and loneliness, 50 reports (24.9%) of 80 apparent suicides linked to family issues, disharmony in conjugal relationships, harassment, sexual violence, emotional breakdown, financial crisis, and stigma due to COVID-19.There were 77 reports (38.3%) concerning domestic violence during the pandemic. Twenty-nine reports (14.4%) referenced actions taken by different organizations to address mental health issues in response to the pandemic in Bangladesh.Conclusion: News coverage has the scope to highlight important issues that can emerge as a consequence of the COVID-pandemic, such as mental health, in a low resource setting. Capacity building of the media on the way to report mental health issues during emergency situations could be a useful strategy for more credible reporting on mental health issues during the COVID-19 pandemic for raising awareness of the public and policymakers about the negative consequences on mental health of the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh. Adopting policies to support essential mental health care and promoting the local organizations to take timely public health measures will be imperative for averting the negative consequences of mental health due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh.

scholarly journals Care-Oriented Practice In At-Risk Units: Risks, Realities and the Role of Multi-Disciplinary Teams

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Alexis Harris
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Risk Management ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Risk Behaviours ◽  
Mental Health Issues ◽  
Self Harm ◽  
Legal Frameworks ◽  
Management Priorities

<p>At-Risk Units (ARUs), which contain and prevent suicide and self-harm among prisoners, have been criticised for their isolating, non-therapeutic nature. This thesis explores the potential for care-oriented practice to develop in ARUs at two prisons, with a particular emphasis on the role that multi-disciplinary teams and an enhanced healthcare presence can play in achieving this goal. Adopting a qualitative framework, this research draws upon nineteen interviews with nursing, forensic and custodial ARU staff from Hawkes Bay Regional Prison (HBRP) and Rimutaka Prison (RP). This research found that while normative care-oriented operational safeguards and legal frameworks underpin current ARU policies, they can often become shaped, or in some cases inhibited, by managerial adherence to compliance, risk-management priorities, limited resourcing, staffing issues and a punitive prison culture. However, in instances where multi-disciplinary teams are well resourced, have open channels of communication and operate within health-focused ARU environments, as evidenced in the current workings of RP, positive care-oriented responses to ‘at-risk’ prisoners can be better provided. The thesis concludes by noting that incremental reforms to the current framework may be useful in enhancing care-oriented ARU practice. However, even with change, the question remains whether correctional ARUs can stem burgeoning mental health issues and ‘at-risk’ behaviours among prisoners.</p>

scholarly journals Peer Responses to Trans Youth Tweeting About Self-Harm and Suicidality

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-142
Author(s):  
Drew Simms
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Young People ◽  
Protective Factor ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Mental Health Problems ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Mental Health Issues ◽  
Self Harm ◽  
Trans Youth

BackgroundTransgender youth have been found to be at higher risk of experiencing common mental health problems than their cisgender peers, but there has been little research into the mechanisms of peer support among this group. Research into how young people communicate about self-harm and suicidality on social media has found patterns of behavior in which young people encourage each other's risky and self-injurious actions, but whether this holds true among minority groups such as trans youth has not been established.MethodTwitter biographies were searched to find self-identifying trans people aged 14–18 years. The resulting accounts were searched for key words related to common mental health issues. The tweets caught by the search terms and their replies were coded into themes using a combination of inductive and deductive coding. The occurrence of themes were quantified and analyzed using SPSS 24.Results1,468 tweets were analyzed from 235 accounts; 133 (56.6%) of the accounts with relevant content received no public replies to tweets mentioning mental health issues. Of the 102 (43.4%) that did receive public replies, 64 (62.7%) received a maximum of two replies. Three themes were found in replies to tweets, Support, Feeling the Same Way, and Advice. Most replies were expressions of support, followed by expressions of feeling the same way; advice was rare. There were no incidents of replies that were dismissive of or encouraged self-injurious behavior.DiscussionFindings differ from existing research on how youth interact with each other online with regard to mental health issues: the trans youth in this study were not found to encourage risky and self-injurious behavior in each other. This has implications for caring for trans youth in mental health settings, where social media use is normally discouraged, as its use may be a protective factor for trans youth specifically.

The feasibility and utility of using coded ambulance records for a violence surveillance system: A novel pilot study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debbie Scott ◽  
Cherie Heilbronn
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Drug Use ◽  
Interpersonal Violence ◽  
Drug Misuse ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Alcohol And Drug Use ◽  
System A ◽  
Mental Health Issues ◽  
Self Harm ◽  
Victims Of Violence

The acute association between interpersonal violence, alcohol and drug use, self-harm, and mental health issues is relatively unexplored. Violence-related ambulance attendances were analysed, differentiated by type of violence and by victim or aggressor of violence, as well as the co-occurrence of alcohol and drug use, self-harm, and mental health issues. Ambulance attendances related to victims of violence had few co-occurring issues beyond alcohol and drug misuse. In contrast, attendances related to aggressors were more complex, with high proportions of co-occurring mental health, self-harm, and alcohol and drug issues. These findings demonstrate the utility of ambulance data for surveillance of interpersonal violence.

scholarly journals Care-Oriented Practice In At-Risk Units: Risks, Realities and the Role of Multi-Disciplinary Teams

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Alexis Harris
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
At Risk ◽  
Risk Management ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
Risk Behaviours ◽  
Mental Health Issues ◽  
Self Harm ◽  
Legal Frameworks ◽  
Management Priorities

<p>At-Risk Units (ARUs), which contain and prevent suicide and self-harm among prisoners, have been criticised for their isolating, non-therapeutic nature. This thesis explores the potential for care-oriented practice to develop in ARUs at two prisons, with a particular emphasis on the role that multi-disciplinary teams and an enhanced healthcare presence can play in achieving this goal. Adopting a qualitative framework, this research draws upon nineteen interviews with nursing, forensic and custodial ARU staff from Hawkes Bay Regional Prison (HBRP) and Rimutaka Prison (RP). This research found that while normative care-oriented operational safeguards and legal frameworks underpin current ARU policies, they can often become shaped, or in some cases inhibited, by managerial adherence to compliance, risk-management priorities, limited resourcing, staffing issues and a punitive prison culture. However, in instances where multi-disciplinary teams are well resourced, have open channels of communication and operate within health-focused ARU environments, as evidenced in the current workings of RP, positive care-oriented responses to ‘at-risk’ prisoners can be better provided. The thesis concludes by noting that incremental reforms to the current framework may be useful in enhancing care-oriented ARU practice. However, even with change, the question remains whether correctional ARUs can stem burgeoning mental health issues and ‘at-risk’ behaviours among prisoners.</p>

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document