Behavior: Am I Suicidal?

A computer may know

Can a computer predict suicide attempts? Better yet, can it do so as successfully as a therapist? On the basis of preliminary tests at the University of Wisconsin Medical School, the answer is a tentative yes.

That conclusion was reached after hundreds of depressed patients had been interviewed by a computer programmed by Psychiatrist John Greist and David Gustafson, professor of preventive medicine. In 72 of the cases, the computer predictions were compared with those made by therapists in traditional face-to-face interviews. The computer correctly identified the three patients who...

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