Suicide is the second most common cause of death in people between the ages of 10 and 19 in Canada. Despite the country's preventative efforts, the number of suicides continues to grow year after year. Existing efforts include increased funding for suicide research, new mental wellness educational programs, and human-assisted monitoring of national suicide statistics. Though these efforts provide an important foundation for preventing suicide in Canada, it's clear additional tactics are needed to save more lives. This is where the predictive and scalable capabilities of AI could offer assistance.

Suicide is the second most common cause of death in people between the ages of 10 and 19 in Canada. Despite the country's preventative efforts, the prevalence of suicide continues to grow year over year. Existing efforts include ramped up suicide research funding, the addition of new mental wellness educational programs, and human-assisted monitoring of national suicide statistics. Though these efforts provide an important foundation for preventing suicide in Canada, it's clear additional tactics are necessary to save more lives. This is where the predictive and scalable capabilities of AI could offer assistance.

The Canadian government will soon hire an Ottawa-based company specializing in social media monitoring and artificial intelligence to forecast potential spikes in suicide risk. A contract with Advanced Symbolics Inc., an AI and market research firm, is set to be finalized next month. Working with the company to develop its strategy, the federal government will define "suicide-related behaviour" on social media and "use that classifier to conduct market research on the general population of Canada," according to a document published to Public Works website. This pilot project will last three months, after which the government "will determine if future work would be useful for ongoing suicide surveillance," the tender document said. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for Canadians aged 10 to 19, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada.

The Canadian government will soon hire an Ottawa-based company specializing in social media monitoring and artificial intelligence to forecast spikes in suicide rates. A contract with Advanced Symbolics Inc., an AI and market research firm, is set to be finalized next month. Working with the company to develop its strategy, the federal government will define "suicide-related behaviour" on social media and "use that classifier to conduct market research on the general population of Canada," according to a document published to Public Works website. This pilot project will last three months, after which the government "will determine if future work would be useful for ongoing suicide surveillance," the tender document said. Instead of calling people to assess public opinion, Advanced Symbolics conducts its market research by identifying and tracking social media accounts to build a representative sample of a population.