Abstract
Data on the number of people who have committed suicide tends to be reported with a substantial time lag of around two years. We examine whether online activity measured by Google searches can help us improve estimates of the number of suicide occurrences in England before official figures are released. Specifically, we analyse how data on the number of Google searches for the terms ‘depression’ and ‘suicide’ relate to the number of suicides between 2004 and 2013. We find that estimates drawing on Google data are significantly better than estimates using previous suicide data alone. We show that a greater number of searches for the term ‘depression’ is related to fewer suicides, whereas a greater number of searches for the term ‘suicide’ is related to more suicides. Data on suicide related search behaviour can be used to improve current estimates of the number of suicide occurrences.Electronic Supplementary MaterialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1140/epjds/s13688-016-0094-0) contains supplementary material.
Highlights
The identification of causes of suicide attempts and suicide occurrences is a topic which has attracted the interest of a number of scientists in psychology and psychiatry [ – ] as well as in other social sciences such as demography, sociology and economics [ – ]
3 Results 3.1 Basic analysis We study how the number of suicide occurrences in England changes over time, and how these changes may be reflected in the online activity of individuals
We find evidence of no unit roots for the suicides data, the KPSS test leads us to reject the null hypothesis of stationarity for this time series (Table )
Summary
The identification of causes of suicide attempts and suicide occurrences is a topic which has attracted the interest of a number of scientists in psychology and psychiatry [ – ] as well as in other social sciences such as demography, sociology and economics [ – ]. Previous studies have provided evidence that online data may help us reduce delay and cost in measuring human behaviour [ , , , , ], allow us to measure aspects of society and our environment that were previously difficult to measure [ , , , ], and in some cases, even predict future actions [ , , , , , ]. We investigate whether data on searches relating to depression and suicide can help us address the problem of delayed data on suicides, and generate estimates of the number of suicide occurrences before official figures are released. A number of previous studies have attempted to investigate whether online search data might provide an avenue for creating quicker estimates of the number of suicide occurrences [ – ].
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
