Machine learning approach for the development of a crucial tool in suicide prevention: The Suicide Crisis Inventory-2 (SCI-2) Short Form

PLoS One. 2024 May 10;19(5):e0299048. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0299048. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

The Suicide Crisis Syndrome (SCS) describes a suicidal mental state marked by entrapment, affective disturbance, loss of cognitive control, hyperarousal, and social withdrawal that has predictive capacity for near-term suicidal behavior. The Suicide Crisis Inventory-2 (SCI-2), a reliable clinical tool that assesses SCS, lacks a short form for use in clinical settings which we sought to address with statistical analysis. To address this need, a community sample of 10,357 participants responded to an anonymous survey after which predictive performance for suicidal ideation (SI) and SI with preparatory behavior (SI-P) was measured using logistic regression, random forest, and gradient boosting algorithms. Four-fold cross-validation was used to split the dataset in 1,000 iterations. We compared rankings to the SCI-Short Form to inform the short form of the SCI-2. Logistic regression performed best in every analysis. The SI results were used to build the SCI-2-Short Form (SCI-2-SF) utilizing the two top ranking items from each SCS criterion. SHAP analysis of the SCI-2 resulted in meaningful rankings of its items. The SCI-2-SF, derived from these rankings, will be tested for predictive validity and utility in future studies.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Aged
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Logistic Models
  • Machine Learning*
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Suicidal Ideation*
  • Suicide / psychology
  • Suicide Prevention*
  • Surveys and Questionnaires
  • Young Adult

Grants and funding

This paper was funded by a private donor (The Eric Masinter Memorial Fund) to Mount Sinai Beth Israel Suicide Prevention Research Lab. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.