Content warning: The topic of this data science meeting is suicide and self harm.
On the 23rd of March, the mental health data science community came together to share findings and best practice at MQ’s 2022 Mental Health Data Science meeting.
This year we are collaborating with HDR UK's new hub - DATAMIND - who is working to enable researchers and stakeholders to find and use UK's rich datasets and health records for mental health research.
The symposiums highlighted some of the best work in the field, focused on a pressing issue of today’s society: Suicidality
Here are our top four takeaways from the event.
- The picture is complex– We need to be pro-active in our efforts to understand and prevent suicide
- To support children and young people, we need to harness the power of data
- Data Science tools can be leveraged for future risk prediction and prevention of suicidal behavior
- By working collaboratively, we can translate mental health research to support people with mental health problems
Top takeaway #1 – The picture is complex– We need to be pro-active in our efforts to understand and prevent suicide
In the first symposium on ascertainment of suicide and self-harm, projects provided exemplary demonstrations of how measuring suicide risk and identifying prevention strategies is an ongoing process. We need to continue asking questions to unravel the whole narrative.
Marcos Del Pozo Banos (Swansea University) and Aideen Mcguire (Queen’s University Belfast) both found that the overall trajectory of people’s mental health during Covid-19 was not altered. However, as Aideen accentuates, to really understand what is happening, it is important that we look further into the changes in the profile of self-harm and suicidal ideation presenters and into who continues to seek access and who stopped. Another example was provided by Emma Ross (Queen’s University Belfast) who found that an alarming majority of firearm suicides in Northern Ireland were in individuals who were not registered firearm holders. This finding again affirms the importance for ongoing exploration.
While we continue to investigate, we need to retain access to mental health and crisis care pathways. What else can we do? People with lived experiences of suicide are critical in conveying the stories behind the statistics presented. For mental health research to reach its full potential for impact, carers and people with lived experience of mental health conditions should be involved across the research lifecycle.
Find out more about MQ's Data Science programme here.
Top takeaway #2 – To support children and young people, we need to harness the power of data
Suicidal behavior and death by suicide, particularly among young people is seldom caused by one thing. To understand the cumulative risk, we need to look into traumatic experiences, vulnerabilities, childhood adversities, and high risk behavior. Using datasets that are not conventionally used for mental health and data science tools can help contextualize and better tell the story of children and young people’s mental health.
Indeed, Jan Savinc (Edinburgh Napier University) and Sze Chim Lee (Swansea University) both provided excellent examples of using data science to harness the power of linked datasets and uncover how childhood adversity and bullying connect to suicidal behavior and self-harm.
While it is important to obtain quality data on children’s mental health, as Dana Dekel (Swansea University) highlighted, we need to make sure that young people are comfortable sharing their data and that standards for good and ethical research practice are upheld.
Watch the discussion on children and young people:
Top takeaway #3 – Data Science tools can be leveraged for future risk prediction and prevention of suicidal behaviour
Data Science techniques give valuable insights into patterns that are usually hard to find, allowing researchers to better understand individual risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviours.
Speakers in Symposium 3 provided remarkable examples of innovative ways to make use of routinely collected data. Charlotte Cliffe (South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust) and Hamish Naismith (Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust) showed how natural language processing tools can be used to examine the risk of suicidal ideation for people with eating disorders and dementia, respectively. Siobhán Murphy (Queen's University Belfast) provided another example of how data linkage can be used in a population wide study of suicidal behaviour following suicidal ideation.
How can we move forward to support population groups who are at increased risk? Understanding the risk factors is very important and we need to continue doing so. However, as Dermot O'Reilly (Queen's University Belfast) and Ann John (Swansea University) remarked, we have more data than we know what to do with, the challenge is in asking the right questions and really thinking about interventions beyond risk factors.
Watch the panel discussion here:
Top takeaway #4 – By working collaboratively, we can translate mental health research to support people with mental health problems
Collaborative action from key stakeholders, beyond the mental health academic community, is critical to accelerating innovation and translating research into improvement in mental health wellbeing.
As Dermot O'Reilly (Queen's University Belfast) phrased it “patient and public involvement helps push the data forward”. Integration across research approaches, organisations, industries, and government provides a valuable opportunity to deliver innovations to the public.
However, we lack the infrastructure to collaborate, and this is often done in an ad-hoc manner. As panel members discussed, many barriers to data sharing have toppled with the pandemic, but it is still an ongoing battle to have the data and understand it. We need to build partnerships and be agile in expanding our networks and working with people on their data. This sentiment was encapsulated by our keynote speaker Christine Moutier (CMO for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention) as she concluded “to prevent suicide, we need a sustained comprehensive multi-sectoral strategy”.
Watch Christie's keynote speech here:
