Overview

  • Team of 15 faculty from Psychiatry, Computer Science, and Business
  • Twitter scrapes to detect increased incidences of suicide risk using a validated phrase dictionary from mental health and suicide experts. The data is  structured using natural language processing, and then analyzed by econometric experts from business.
  • Project funded by direct grant from Vice Provost for Research, Johns Hopkins University
  • Other projects being planned in a general survey of the population on depression, anxiety, and other milder forms of mental conditions, in collaboration with a team from Chile and Spain.
  • Collaboration with Center for the Business of Health on the economic consequences of the mental health impact of COVID-19. Individuals that develop or have worsened mental health conditions as a result of COVID-19 confinement and job loss may enter the chronic unemployment rolls, increasing the long-term deadweight loss to economic welfare.

Hypotheses

  1. Suicide risk will increase among individuals subject to stay at home orders.
  2. The longer the stay at home orders, the higher the suicide risk.
  3. Job loss will mediate the relationship.
  4. Prior mental health conditions will positively moderate the relationship.

 

Investigators

Computer Science
Mathias Unberath, Chien-Ming Huang, Mark Dredze, Anand Malpani 

Business
Phillip Phan, Erik Helzer

Psychiatry
Paul Nestadt, Bernadette Cullen, Patrick Finan, Timothy Moran, Tracy Vannorsdall, Robert Roca