How artificial intelligence can help predict suicide risk of mental health patients

A team from Huddersfield has pioneered the use of artificial intelligence to predict those mental health patients most likely to take their own lives. Prof Grigoris Antoniou and a team at the University of Huddersfield worked with South West Yorkshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (SWYPFT) to examine how AI could help reduce the risk of suicide among mental health patients. Now further work will be carried out into ways of deploying the new computer-based technique. Although clinical decisions about suicide risk will always be based on clinical judgement, findings from this research should aid decision-making by identifying high risk patients based on learning from previous suicides. Prof Antoniou, a globally-acknowledged expert in AI technologies, and his team analysed data from more than 100 suicide cases in order to compile a list of the key risk factors.