Timeframe
2022
Funding
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
COMPASS staff
Barry Milne
Natalia Boven
Collaborators
University of Auckland
Terryann Clarke
University of Michigan
Leah Richmond-Rakerd
Description
This project is run by Leah Richmond-Rakerd at the University of Michigan. Healthcare providers (who are most likely to assess for suicide and self-harm) typically only have access to the information available in the health record. However, we know that risk factors for suicide exist in other domains, e.g. history of violent offending. Individuals at risk for suicide may face barriers to presenting for treatment, e.g. stigma, and so may be more likely to have contact with other types of health and social sectors, e.g. social welfare and pharmaceutical systems.
These could be important, untapped settings in which to identify individuals at risk and connect them to appropriate services. Conducting suicide risk prediction using data that are routinely collected and available at the national level can inform population-level prevention efforts. It can also provide insight into at-risk individuals’ pathways through care – the patterns of service use that predate self-harm and suicide attempts.
This project aims to:
- Test whether integrating information across multiple health and social systems improves prediction of suicide and self-harm risk, at the population level;
- Test model performance across sex, age, ethnicity, and deprivation level, as well as across different lengths of follow-up; and
- Evaluate model performance across different ethnic groups, to identify if some are inappropriately identified.