Ricky Kirkendall chats with #SPSM about the CheckUp Project, Sunday, 10/19/14, 9pm CST. The CheckUp project is one software engineer’s approach to using social media data to identify people at risk of suicide and get them to help and support. Visitors to this website can sign up to be a part of the beta project (#SPSM folks, as an educated community on all things suicide prevention and social media, this is another project you can check out, ask questions, and offer feedback about).
From the project’s website:
“The goal of the CheckUp project is to detect any serious sign of depression, self-harm or suicide posted to a social network and provide peer support by notifying a concerned party.
“With the overwhelming amount of social data available today, it has become too easy to miss important signs of depression or even potentially suicidal cries for help. The CheckUp project approaches this problem algorithmically by introducing a service to monitor social accounts using research-backed phrase detection and sentiment analysis. The work is ongoing and the project is open source. It is important to note that any sophisticated methods for evaluating psychological conditions are outside the scope of this project. CheckUp only attempts to detect posts that can be reasonably interpreted as self-threatening.”
Ricky Kirkendall is a senior computer science student at Marshall University. During his time as a student, Ricky founded a software company to develop apps for organizations such as the American Foundation for the Blind. Recently, Ricky has has partnered with Brigham Young University to develop the CheckUp Project, an open source suicide prevention initiative.
The Tweets for this chat will be archived on Storify.
Suicide Prevention Social Media #SPSM 