1
|
Voros V, Fekete S, Szabo Z, Torma E, Nagy A, Fekete J, Tenyi T, Osvath P. High prevalence of suicide-related internet use among patients with depressive disorders - a cross-sectional study with psychiatric in-patients. Psychiatry Res 2022; 317:114815. [PMID: 36063749 DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2022.114815] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/10/2022] [Revised: 08/26/2022] [Accepted: 08/28/2022] [Indexed: 10/31/2022]
Abstract
The association between Internet use and suicidal behavior is a subject of intense research. Internet use patterns of patients with depressive disorders were assessed to determine the prevalence and aim of browsing for suicide-related contents and its impact on help-seeking. Self-administered questionnaire among psychiatric in-patients treated for depression was used to assess suicidal behavior, characteristics of Internet use and help-seeking preferences. 113 psychiatric in-patients with depressive disorders participated in the study. One-third had a history of life-time suicide attempt and the majority had already encountered suicide-related contents while browsing the Internet. 27.4% reported intentional and specific search for suicidal contents. This suicide-related Internet user (SRIU) group was characterized by younger age, single status, more frequent suicidal ideations, and they more likely considered that they would attempt suicide in the future. Among patients with depressive disorders, a sub-group was identified with a potential higher suicide risk. The frequent use of the Internet and online help-seeking preference may provide an opportunity to prevent suicidal behavior in this high-risk sub-group. Further research is needed into the possibilities of using the Internet more effectively for suicide prevention.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Viktor Voros
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School, University of Pecs, Pecs, Hungary.
| | - Sandor Fekete
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School, University of Pecs, Pecs, Hungary
| | - Zsuzsanna Szabo
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School, University of Pecs, Pecs, Hungary
| | - Eszter Torma
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School, University of Pecs, Pecs, Hungary
| | - Agnes Nagy
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School, University of Pecs, Pecs, Hungary
| | - Judit Fekete
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School, University of Pecs, Pecs, Hungary
| | - Tamas Tenyi
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School, University of Pecs, Pecs, Hungary
| | - Peter Osvath
- Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Medical School, University of Pecs, Pecs, Hungary
| |
Collapse
|
2
|
Ramadhani ID, Latifah L, Prasetyo A, Khairunnisa M, Wardhani YF, Yunitawati D, Fahlevi M. Infodemiology on diet and weight loss behavior before and during COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia: Implication for public health promotion. Front Nutr 2022; 9:981204. [PMID: 36245536 PMCID: PMC9555344 DOI: 10.3389/fnut.2022.981204] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/29/2022] [Accepted: 08/01/2022] [Indexed: 11/30/2022] Open
Abstract
Objective This study set out to explore public interest through information search trends on diet and weight loss before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia. Methods The Google Trends database was evaluated for the relative internet search popularity on diet-related search terms, including top and rising diet-related terms. The search range was before and during the COVID-19 pandemic (April 2018 to January 2022) in the Indonesia region. We analyzed the Relative Search Volume (RSV) data using line charts, correlation, and comparison tests. Results Search queries of “lose weight” was higher during the pandemic (58.34 ± 9.70 vs. 68.69 ± 7.72; p<0.05). No difference was found in diet-related searches before and after the pandemic. Public interest in the diet was higher after Eid al-Fitr (Muslims break fasting celebration day) and after the new year. Many fad diet (FD) terms were found on the top and rising terms. Conclusion After Eid al-Fitr and the new year were susceptible times for promoting a healthy diet in Indonesia. Potential need found before those times for education in inserting healthy food among fatty and sugary menus related to holidays and celebrations. Higher interest in “lose weight” was relevant to heightened obesity risk during the social restriction and heightened COVID-19 morbidity and mortality due to obesity. The high interest for rapid weight loss through FD needs to be resolved by promoting healthy diets with a more captivating message and messenger, like consistently using top terms in the keywords of the official healthy diet guidance. Future research could explore the relationship between diet and other behavior or with non-communicable diseases.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
| | - Leny Latifah
- Research Center for Public Health and Nutrition, National Research and Innovation Agency Republic of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia
| | - Andjar Prasetyo
- Regional Development Planning Agency, Magelang, Indonesia
- *Correspondence: Andjar Prasetyo
| | - Marizka Khairunnisa
- Research Center for Public Health and Nutrition, National Research and Innovation Agency Republic of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia
| | - Yurika Fauzia Wardhani
- Research Center for Public Health and Nutrition, National Research and Innovation Agency Republic of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia
| | - Diah Yunitawati
- Research Center for Public Health and Nutrition, National Research and Innovation Agency Republic of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia
| | - Mochammad Fahlevi
- Department of Management, BINUS Online Learning, Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta, Indonesia
| |
Collapse
|
3
|
Lee JY, Pham A, Wong J, Deng Z. Firearm-related internet searches as a correlate of future firearm suicides: Cross-correlation analyses of monthly Google search volumes and method-specific suicide rates in the United States. JOURNAL OF AFFECTIVE DISORDERS REPORTS 2021. [DOI: 10.1016/j.jadr.2021.100181] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
|
4
|
Chen Y, He G, Chen B, Wang S, Ju G, Ge T. The association between PM2.5 exposure and suicidal ideation: a prefectural panel study. BMC Public Health 2020; 20:293. [PMID: 32138702 PMCID: PMC7059660 DOI: 10.1186/s12889-020-8409-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/22/2019] [Accepted: 02/25/2020] [Indexed: 11/15/2022] Open
Abstract
Background Suicidal ideation is subject to serious underestimation among existing public health studies. While numerous factors have been recognized in affecting suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STB), the associated environmental risks have been poorly understood. Foremost among the various environment risks were air pollution, in particular, the PM2.5. The present study attempted to examine the relationship between PM2.5 level and local weekly index of suicidal ideation (ISI). Methods Using Internet search query volumes in Baidu (2017), the largest internet search engine in China, we constructed a prefectural panel data (278 prefectures, 52 weeks) and employed dynamic panel GMM system estimation to analyze the relationship between weekly concentration of PM2.5 (Mean = 87 μg·m− 3) and the index of suicidal ideation (Mean = 49.9). Results The results indicate that in the spring and winter, a 10 μg·m− 3 increase in the prior week’s PM2.5 in a Chinese city is significantly associated with 0.020 increase in ISI in spring and a 0.007 increase in ISI in winter, after taking account other co-pollutants and meteorological conditions. Conclusion We innovatively proposed the measure of suicidal ideation and provided suggestive evidence of a positive association between suicidal ideation and PM2.5 level.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Yunsong Chen
- Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies, Gulou District, Nanjing, 210093, China.
| | - Guangye He
- School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, 163 Xianlin Road, Qixia District, Nanjing, 210023, China.
| | - Buwei Chen
- The First Affiliated Hospital with Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 210029, China.
| | - Senhu Wang
- The University of Cambridge, 16 Mill Lane, Cambridge, CB2 1SB, UK
| | - Guodong Ju
- School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, 163 Xianlin Road, Qixia District, Nanjing, 210023, China
| | - Ting Ge
- School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, 163 Xianlin Road, Qixia District, Nanjing, 210023, China
| |
Collapse
|
5
|
Search trends preceding increases in suicide: A cross-correlation study of monthly Google search volume and suicide rate using transfer function models. J Affect Disord 2020; 262:155-164. [PMID: 31733460 DOI: 10.1016/j.jad.2019.11.014] [Citation(s) in RCA: 15] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/31/2019] [Revised: 10/28/2019] [Accepted: 11/02/2019] [Indexed: 11/22/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Various associations between monthly Google search volumes (MGSVs) and monthly suicide rates (MSRs) have been reported. However, these studies often analyzed a limited number of search terms using suboptimal statistical methods. While controlling for spurious associations, this study examined a wide array of suicide-related search terms to elucidate if their MGSVs correlated with future MSRs. METHODS MGSVs of 111 candidate suicide-related terms were calculated by averaging 10 time-series data per term obtained from Google Trends. Box-Jenkins transfer function modeling was applied to time-series data of MGSV and MSR among the total, male, and female populations of the United States between 2004 and 2017. Cross-correlation coefficients between MGSVs and MSRs were calculated at lags -3, -2, and -1. Sensitivity analysis identified cross-correlations whose direction and significance (p<0.05) persisted in two other time spans: 126 and 84 months. RESULTS Eighty-nine terms were analyzed. MGSVs of 31 terms significantly correlated with MSRs in the total, male, or female population. In the sensitivity analysis, three terms stably exhibited significant positive correlation: "generalized anxiety disorder" (total; lag -3), "anxiety disorder" (total and male; lag -3), and "laid off" (total, male, and female; lag -2). The term sleep problem (total and female; lag -1) consistently showed significant negative correlations. LIMITATIONS Sex- or age-specific search-volume data, lags of less than a month, and potential confounding factors of MGSV and MSR were not explored. CONCLUSIONS trends in MGSV of four terms tend to precede changes in MSR. These terms may enable more accurate forecasting of future suicides.
Collapse
|
6
|
Memon SA, Razak S, Weber I. Lifestyle Disease Surveillance Using Population Search Behavior: Feasibility Study. J Med Internet Res 2020; 22:e13347. [PMID: 32012050 PMCID: PMC7011125 DOI: 10.2196/13347] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/09/2019] [Revised: 10/08/2019] [Accepted: 11/29/2019] [Indexed: 12/27/2022] Open
Abstract
Background As the process of producing official health statistics for lifestyle diseases is slow, researchers have explored using Web search data as a proxy for lifestyle disease surveillance. Existing studies, however, are prone to at least one of the following issues: ad-hoc keyword selection, overfitting, insufficient predictive evaluation, lack of generalization, and failure to compare against trivial baselines. Objective The aims of this study were to (1) employ a corrective approach improving previous methods; (2) study the key limitations in using Google Trends for lifestyle disease surveillance; and (3) test the generalizability of our methodology to other countries beyond the United States. Methods For each of the target variables (diabetes, obesity, and exercise), prevalence rates were collected. After a rigorous keyword selection process, data from Google Trends were collected. These data were denormalized to form spatio-temporal indices. L1-regularized regression models were trained to predict prevalence rates from denormalized Google Trends indices. Models were tested on a held-out set and compared against baselines from the literature as well as a trivial last year equals this year baseline. A similar analysis was done using a multivariate spatio-temporal model where the previous year’s prevalence was included as a covariate. This model was modified to create a time-lagged regression analysis framework. Finally, a hierarchical time-lagged multivariate spatio-temporal model was created to account for subnational trends in the data. The model trained on US data was, then, applied in a transfer learning framework to Canada. Results In the US context, our proposed models beat the performances of the prior work, as well as the trivial baselines. In terms of the mean absolute error (MAE), the best of our proposed models yields 24% improvement (0.72-0.55; P<.001) for diabetes; 18% improvement (1.20-0.99; P=.001) for obesity, and 34% improvement (2.89-1.95; P<.001) for exercise. Our proposed across-country transfer learning framework also shows promising results with an average Spearman and Pearson correlation of 0.70 for diabetes and 0.90 and 0.91 for obesity, respectively. Conclusions Although our proposed models beat the baselines, we find the modeling of lifestyle diseases to be a challenging problem, one that requires an abundance of data as well as creative modeling strategies. In doing so, this study shows a low-to-moderate validity of Google Trends in the context of lifestyle disease surveillance, even when applying novel corrective approaches, including a proposed denormalization scheme. We envision qualitative analyses to be a more practical use of Google Trends in the context of lifestyle disease surveillance. For the quantitative analyses, the highest utility of using Google Trends is in the context of transfer learning where low-resource countries could benefit from high-resource countries by using proxy models.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Shahan Ali Memon
- Language Technologies Institute, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, United States
| | | | - Ingmar Weber
- Social Computing Department, Qatar Computing Research Institute, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Doha, Qatar
| |
Collapse
|
7
|
Abstract
PURPOSE OF REVIEW Suicide is the second leading cause of death in youth aged 10-24 years old globally, but detecting those at risk is challenging. Novel preventive strategies with wide influence across populations are required. Interest in the potential for both detrimental and supportive influences of social media/internet use on suicidal behaviour has been growing; however, the relationship remains unclear. RECENT FINDINGS A systematic search of articles from database inception up to 25 January 2019 across five databases: Medline, PsycINFO, EMBASE, HMIC and CINAHL revealed nine independent studies investigating social media/internet use and suicide attempts in young people less than 19 years old (n = 346 416). An independent direct association was found between heavy social media/internet use and increased suicide attempts in seven studies (adjusted ORs ranged from 1.03 to 5.10), although adjusting for cyberbullying victimization and sleep disturbance reduced the strength of this association. Two studies found that some social media/internet use, versus no use, may be associated with fewer suicide attempts. There were no studies investigating the relationship between social media/internet use and completed suicide. SUMMARY There is an independent association between problematic use of social media/internet and suicide attempts in young people. However, the direction of causality, if any, remains unclear. Further evaluation through longitudinal studies is needed.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Rosemary Sedgwick
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London
- South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
| | - Sophie Epstein
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London
- South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
| | - Rina Dutta
- South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
- Department of Psychological Medicine, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London, London, UK
| | - Dennis Ougrin
- Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King's College London
- South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust
| |
Collapse
|
8
|
Bodwal J, Kumar Sikary A, Chauhan M, Behera C. Request for euthanasia in the suicide note of a planned suicide. Med Leg J 2018; 87:97-99. [PMID: 30489203 DOI: 10.1177/0025817218789826] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
This case is of a suicide victim who purchased various drugs online using forged prescriptions after detailed research about the drugs to commit suicide. He left a suicide note giving details of his suicide methods and the reasons for it. He also denied any treatment and asked for euthanasia if he survived and remained in a vegetative state.
Collapse
Affiliation(s)
- Jatin Bodwal
- 1 Department of Forensic Medicine, DDU Hospital, New Delhi, India
| | - Asit Kumar Sikary
- 2 Department of Forensic Medicine, ESIC Medical College, Faridabad, India
| | - Mohit Chauhan
- 3 Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Department of Forensic Medicine, SGT University, Chandu Budhera, Gurugram, India
| | - Chittaranjan Behera
- 4 Department of Forensic Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India
| |
Collapse
|