KETCH: A Knowledge-Enhanced Transformer-Based Approach to Suicidal Ideation Detection from Social Media Content

Suicide is a major cause of death among 15- to 29-year-olds globally, claiming more than 50,000 lives in the United States in 2023 alone. Despite governmental efforts to provide support, many individuals experiencing suicidal thoughts do not seek help but are increasingly turning to social media to express their feelings. This trend offers a critical opportunity for timely detection and intervention of suicidal ideation. We develop an innovative transformer-based model for suicidal ideation detection (SID) that combines domain knowledge with dynamic embedding and lexicon-based enhancements. Our model, which is tested on social media data in two languages from different platforms, outperforms existing state-of-the-art models for SID. We have also explored its applicability to detecting depression and its practical implementation in real-world scenarios. Our research contributes significantly to the field, offering new methods for timely and proactive intervention in suicidal ideation, with potential wide-reaching effects on public health, economics, and society. Methodologically, our approach advances the integration of human expertise into AI models to enhance their effectiveness.