NEW YORK -- Facebook is helping to open a window into the minds of those who die by suicide.
The social media site is providing researchers at the suicide prevention group SAVE.org a glimpse of how those who take their own lives behave in the days leading up to their deaths, as outlined in their Facebook postings. Dan Reidenberg, executive director of Save and a national leader in the counseling field, expects the information will one day help friends, family and social media sites better identify warning signs in the words and actions that lead up to suicide. It will be a year before they have the data gathered, he said.The Jan. 11 death of Internet activist Aaron Swartz, the latest casualty in a series of high-profile suicides in the technology industry over a decade, has spurred new interest in understanding the triggers that compel people to cut their own lives short. In the past, researchers had to overcome protective friends and family to get information. This project changes that dynamic, Reidenberg said."Friends sometimes don't ask important questions for fear of being invasive," said Reidenberg, a psychologist who also serves as managing director of the National Council for Suicide Prevention. "If we can see what's happening, we can train people to look for it."The company introduced a tool for searching the information posted to its social network of more than 1 billion users on Jan. 16.Facebook isn't alone in its efforts. Twitter and Google also have put systems in place that direct at-risk users to counseling help, or allow others to report concerns to the company. Google's search engine brings up the phone number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline for any searches on "suicide" or related terms, said Jay Nancarrow, a company spokesman.Swartz's death follows a pattern of high-profile suicides within the industry. In 2008, Jonathan James, a hacker who was the first juvenile incarcerated for cybercrime in the United States, died at age 24. In 2009, Dan Haubert, a co-founder of TicketStumbler, died when he was 25. Gene Kan, the founder of InfraSearch, died in 2002 at age 26. In 2011, Ilya Zhitomirskiy, a co-founder of the social media site Diaspora, died by suicide at age 22.Social media's partnership with suicide experts started in the summer of 2010, after a cluster of suicides in Palo Alto, Calif., Reidenberg said.In 2011, Facebook set up a system in which the company offers a way to connect potentially at-risk users with counseling services based on referrals from friends.Now the company will help independent researchers analyze patterns that may reveal how people approach their decisions to commit suicide -- changes in the type of language used, or intervals between posts, Reidenberg said."Anything that can decrease the latency between someone needing help and getting help is beneficial," said Frederic Wolens, a spokesman for Facebook. "We're trying to really shorten that period of time, whether it's Facebook intervening, or that person's friends or suicide prevention organizations."Have more to add? News tip? Tell us
