Predicting Suicidal Ideation on Reddit: A Precise Machine Learning Classifier for Mental Health Support

The main aim of this research work is to detect suicide-related thoughts in social media, particularly on Reddit, for preventing potential suicidal incidents and offering appropriate mental health support. Limited access to mental health care facilities, lack of awareness, and inadequate social support hinder individuals facing mental health issues, stress, and insecurity from receiving proper therapy. Social networking platforms like Instagram, Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook have become crucial channels for expressing emotions. Supervised machine learning algorithms, such as classification and sentiment analysis (SA), are commonly used in text analysis. The proposed model employs machine learning (ML) techniques and smart classifiers to proactively identify individuals expressing suicidal thoughts on social media, achieving 95% accuracy, 100% precision, 98% recall, and a 95% F-score. A comparison of proposed model with base paper is performed. This research opens the door for leveraging technology to save lives and enhance well-being in this digital age.