Multimodal Behavioral Markers Exploring Suicidal Intent in Social Media Videos

ABSTRACT

Suicide is one of the leading causes of death in the modern world. In this digital age, individuals are increasingly using social media to express themselves and often use these platforms to express suicidal intent. Various studies have inspected suicidal intent behavioral markers in controlled environments but it is still unexplored if such markers will generalize to suicidal intent expressed on social media. In this work, we set out to study multimodal behavioral markers related to suicidal intent when expressed on social media videos. We explore verbal, acoustic and visual behavioral markers in the context of identifying individuals at higher risk of suicidal attempt. Our analysis reveals that frequent silences, slouched shoulders, rapid hand movements and profanity are predominant multimodal behavioral markers indicative of suicidal intent1.

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