Mexican students develop chatbot to detect suicidal behavior

Graduates

from the Guadalajara University (UdeG) are working to develop a computer system called “ chatbot ”, that works through social media to help detect suicide risk factors.

Manuel Santana Castolo and Patricia Brand

designed

a strategy to diminish this conduct in young people, as social media helps to establish a dialogue between social groups.

The university students are looking to create a bot (program) that interacts with users through Facebook messenger , they want it to detect suicide risk factors and provide the necessary attention .

Patricia Brand

, a p sychologist , emphasized that the idea is that through the communication the bot will establish with the users , it could detect if there's depression or suicide risk . She clarified that this is not a diagnosi s, it's only detection and a possible channeling towards professionals .

In 2015 , the INEGI revealed that there were 6,285 suicides in the country , which is 5.2 suicides for every 100,000 people.

After learning about this, the Biomedical Engineer, Manuel Santana started to develop an app to detect suicide risk ; he knew the difficulties he would face to share this with young people, that's why he opted for social media platform s to materialize the idea .

Depression, life-threatening disorder

To carry out this project, both experts got together to look for the right methodology to detect suicide risks.

“We're looking to implement artificial intelligence algorithms . The idea is that these algorithms improve with the users, the more questions it processes, the better it will interpret the answers”, said Santana.

In its first stage , the chatbot will receive the user's basic information to create a profile about the person who is interacting with it, and later, it will work with questions based on medical manuals to trace a path that allows detecting risk factors.

That way, once the system detects a risk factor , it will establish contact with the previously assigned references , or with mental health institutions.

The young university students expect that the bot's first stage will be ready by October .

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