The algorithm developed by Brazilians to try to predict and avoid suicides | Science and health

The researchers created an algorithm able to analyze texts looking for signs indicating that the author of these annotations could kill themselves. As a fictional patient, the HCPA team used only Virginia Woolf, a British writer who committed suicide at age 41.

One of the study's leaders, psychiatrist and Ives Professor Cavalcante Passos, explains that Virginia Woolf's choice is due to the author's story, similar to that of several people deceased: he has suffered from bipolar disorder and has depressive episodes followed by suicide attempts.

Virginia Woolf had the advantage of having a large production of published personal texts, as she wrote letters and notes almost daily in her diary.

The algorithm chosen was the same as the one used by the emails to identify which messages should be sent to the junk mail box and which messages should be in the inbox.

The first step was to "teach" the algorithm to identify the letters and notes related to the result of the suicide. For this, texts written by Virginia Woolf were used in the two months preceding her death.

This reduction of time was determined by the doctors, who understood that she had already entered a critical phase of the risk of suicide.

Once the system was formed, it was randomly applied in several of the novelist's writings, written both during periods of pre-trial suicide and at other times when he was out of danger.

The result is that the algorithm was accurate in 80% of cases. That is to say that all the 100 texts analyzed, he correctly underlined the result: that Virginia tries or not to commit suicide in the months to come.

According to Passos, the idea is that in the future, the same tool can be transplanted into an application capable of analyzing everything we write on the smartphone, such as WhatsApp messages and social networks, and that would trigger a alert when there is a risk of suicide. .

But the doctor remembers that the algorithm is individualized because the writing scheme of each person is different. In other words, the algorithm created for Virginia Woolf only works for Virginia Woolf.

In addition, the tool can only be applied to patients who have tried to commit suicide precisely because they must be trained based on past events. As the professor explains, the main risk factor for suicide is that he has already tried to commit suicide.

More than that, people usually show signs of suicide: "Whoever gives hints, who says he is going to commit suicide, who writes a suicide letter, or the college student who finds the coordinator or who talk with your boyfriend who can try to commit suicide, this person has to go slowly, he can really commit suicide. "

In the future, the model created by the Porto Alegre team could be made even more precise by the inclusion of other risk factors, such as the sex of the patient (in Brazil, men kill 4 times more than women), family suicide or use of alcohol or other drugs.

The teacher does not rule out that the application can even analyze variations in the user's digital phenotype, such as voice over the phone or typing speed.

For the doctor, this type of algorithm should make medicine more preventive: "Today, the subject arrives depressed in my office." Imagine that in the future it comes much earlier. We will not treat the depressive episode, but avoid this depressive episode. "

The paper composed Gabriela's master's thesis of Ávila Berni and was supervised by Professor Flávio Kapczinski of McMaster University.

For me the world was black and white

Teresinha from Lourdes da Silva is 60 years old and has attempted to commit suicide twice. The first took place more than 15 years ago after the divorce of the ex-husband. Three years later, a new depressive crisis culminates in the second assassination attempt. "I did not have fun in life, for me the world was black and white."

Things began to change when Teresinha decided to take the treatment seriously, with regular consultations with the psychiatrist and the use of medication. Family support was also essential, especially in the most critical periods of depression, when she could not be alone at home.

Teresinha has returned to work as a nanny and is happy to serve as an example to those who are going through difficult times. Their main advice is to ask for help: "We can never do it alone.If I did not ask for specialized care, I had consumed them.These (health professionals) are the angels of my life."

According to Dr. Ives Cavalcanti, the case of Teresinha proves how suicide can be avoided: "If the person has suicidal thoughts, if you identify him and treat him well, it is about an extremely reversible event ".

Virginia Woolf: Family Trauma and Obscurantism

The "patient" chosen in the HCPA study led an eventful life, both from the family perspective and from the historical context that Europe was experiencing in the first half of the twentieth century.

Born in 1882 in a district of London, United Kingdom, Virginia Woolf grew up among artists and intellectuals strongly influenced by ideas born at the time, including psychoanalysis and nihilism.

Professor Elaine Indrusiak of the Post Graduate Program in Letters of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul reminds us that this pre-war worldview had a strong influence on the life and work of Virginia Woolf.

"The clash between the very rigorous morality of the Victorian era and the obscurantism that is beginning to emerge, the bankruptcy of everything … Virginia prints this fragmentation that she experienced and felt in the psyche, but that is also a fragmentation of the society itself that she lives. "

On a personal level, Woolf's life was marked by the losses of the mother (aged 13) and two brothers. Several biographies tell that she and Sister Vanessa were sexually assaulted by two older half-brothers.

According to Indrusiak, the writer was not satisfied with the way society has subjugated women. The factors associated with the diagnosis of bipolar disorder account for many of the anxieties revealed in the diaries and charts analyzed by HCPA physicians.

From a literary point of view, the teacher points out that Virginia Woolf is one of the writers who used the flow of consciousness technique with more mastery and highlights three works of the English novelist: Towards the Lighthouse, Mrs. Dalloway and Orlando.