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Clustering suicides: A data-driven, exploratory machine learning approach.
- Source :
-
European Psychiatry . Oct2019, Vol. 62, p15-19. 5p. - Publication Year :
- 2019
-
Abstract
- Methods of suicide have received considerable attention in suicide research. The common approach to differentiate methods of suicide is the classification into "violent" versus "non-violent" method. Interestingly, since the proposition of this dichotomous differentiation, no further efforts have been made to question the validity of such a classification of suicides. This study aimed to challenge the traditional separation into "violent" and "non-violent" suicides by generating a cluster analysis with a data-driven, machine learning approach. In a retrospective analysis, data on all officially confirmed suicides (N = 77,894) in Austria between 1970 and 2016 were assessed. Based on a defined distance metric between distributions of suicides over age group and month of the year, a standard hierarchical clustering method was performed with the five most frequent suicide methods. In cluster analysis, poisoning emerged as distinct from all other methods – both in the entire sample as well as in the male subsample. Violent suicides could be further divided into sub-clusters: hanging, shooting, and drowning on the one hand and jumping on the other hand. In the female sample, two different clusters were revealed – hanging and drowning on the one hand and jumping, poisoning, and shooting on the other. Our data-driven results in this large epidemiological study confirmed the traditional dichotomization of suicide methods into "violent" and "non-violent" methods, but on closer inspection "violent methods" can be further divided into sub-clusters and a different cluster pattern could be identified for women, requiring further research to support these refined suicide phenotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- *SUICIDE
*MACHINE learning
*AGE groups
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 09249338
- Volume :
- 62
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- European Psychiatry
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 139844656
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eurpsy.2019.08.009