Mental Health Leaders calling for AI technology investment to aid suicide prevention

Leading UK mental health campaigners will call for increased international investment into AI technology to help reduce the number of people taking their lives each year at a global Zero Suicide Summit in Liverpool.

Suicide campaigners from around the world will attend the Zero Suicide 5 Global Summit, run in partnership between the Zero Suicide Alliance (ZSA) and Henry Ford Health. The event will run for two days at the iconic Royal Liver Building on 24-25 June 2024, which will light up in orange alongside other civic buildings in the city, to mark the occasion and will be hosted by award-winning broadcaster, Claudia Hammond.

Speakers include Steve Rotheram, Mayor of Liverpool City Region, 3 Dads Walking and Nav Kapur, Director of the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health and Head of Research at the Centre for Mental Health and Safety. 

The schedule includes a panel on the second day which will discuss AI Machine Learning and Technology in Suicide Prevention Practices, where Prof Joe Rafferty CBE, one of the co-founders of the ZSA and Chief Executive Officer of Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust, will call for further investment from all sectors to help with research.

“There can be this negativity about AI technology but at Mersey Care we’re already found several ways to incorporate it into our suicide prevention work,” revealed Prof Rafferty. “We’re already trialling an internet interceptor on our website where helpful messages automatically pop up if anyone searches for ‘suicide’, while we’ve also been working with Holmusk to look at all deaths by suicide in our care, using their algorithms to flag risks and helped inform the development of a new pathway of care.

“But if AI technology is to continue helping research into suicide prevention, then we need investment in the UK and throughout the world. We need all sectors, from private businesses to individuals to get involved in a co-ordinated response – the more we understand about risk factors, the more we can help those who feel so helpless that they believe taking their own life is their only option.”

Prof Rafferty will be joined on the panel by Nawal Roy, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Holmusk, who are building the world’s largest evidence platform for mental and behavioural health, Dan Joyce, consultant psychiatrist and Professor of Connected Mental Health at the Mental Health Research for Innovation Centre (a National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) funded joint enterprise between Mersey Care and University of Liverpool) and Bobbi Jo Yaborough, a clinical psychologist and health services researcher who works to improve care and health outcomes among individuals with serious mental illnesses in the USA.

The last World Health Organisation Report into world suicide statistics in 2019 estimated more than 700,000 people die by suicide every year, while suicide rates in Liverpool increased drastically in 2019-21 to above the national average and has continued to do so in 2020-22.

The Zero Suicide International Summit is named for the innovative, evidence-based suicide intervention model developed at Henry Ford Health, a Detroit, Michigan-based health system. Henry Ford Health experts developed the Zero Suicide method in 2001. Within a year of implementing the strategy, the health system experienced a 70-80% suicide reduction rate.

Other topics being discussed at the summit include:

• Why Zero Suicide has been adopted as the standard approach within the suicide prevention community
• How it’s been implemented in the USA and Australia
• Efforts to implement Zero Suicide in Southeast Asia
• Considering workforce wellness within suicide prevention strategies
• Funding and return on investment for Zero Suicide.

The full agenda for the two-day summit can be found on its website, which includes other useful information about the event and previous summits, the last of which was held in Rotterdam in 2018.