AUTHOR=Byeon Haewon 

TITLE=Prediction of adolescent suicidal ideation after the COVID-19 pandemic: A nationwide survey of a representative sample of Korea

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Pediatrics

VOLUME=Volume 10 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/pediatrics/articles/10.3389/fped.2022.951439

DOI=10.3389/fped.2022.951439

ISSN=2296-2360

ABSTRACT=Objective: This study developed a model to predict groups vulnerable to suicidal ideation after the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic based on nomogram techniques targeting 54,948 adolescents who participated in a national survey in South Korea.

Methods: This study developed a model to predict suicidal ideation by using logistic regression analysis. The model aimed to understand the relationship between predictors associated with the suicidal ideation of South Korean adolescents by using the top seven variables with the highest feature importance confirmed in XGBoost (Extreme Gradient Boosting). The regression model was developed using a nomogram so that medical workers could easily interpret the probability of suicidal ideation and identify groups vulnerable to suicidal ideation.

Results: This epidemiological study predicted that 8th graders who experienced depression in the past 12 months, had a lot of subjective stress, frequently felt lonely in the last 12 months, experienced much-worsened household economic status during the COVID-19 pandemic, and had poor academic performance were vulnerable to suicidal ideation. The results of 10-fold cross validation revealed that the AUC of the adolescent suicidal ideation prediction nomogram was 0.86, the general accuracy of it was 0.89, the precision of it was 0.87, the recall of it 0.89, and the F1-score of it was 0.88.

Conclusion: It is required to recognize the seriousness of adolescent suicide and mental health after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and to prepare a customized support system that considers the characteristics of persons at risk of suicide at the school or community level.