Google Trends: Ready for real-time suicide prevention or just a Zeta-Jones effect? An exploratory study.
Fiche publication
Date publication
août 2015
Journal
Psychiatry research
Auteurs
Membres identifiés du Cancéropôle Est :
Pr HAFFEN Emmanuel
Tous les auteurs :
Fond G, Gaman A, Brunel L, Haffen E, Llorca PM
Lien Pubmed
Résumé
Two studies have shown that increasing the consultation of the word "suicide" in the Google search engine was associated with a subsequent increase in the prevalence of suicide attempts. The main goal of this article was to explore the trends generated by a key-word search associated with suicide, depression and bipolarity in an attempt to identify general trends (disorders epidemics in the population/"real events" vs newsworthy advertisement/"media event"). Based on previous studies, the frequency of the search words "how to suicide" and "commit suicide" were analyzed for suicide, as well as "depression" (for depressive disorders) and "bipolar disorder". Together, these analyses suggest that the search for the words "how to suicide" or "commit suicide" on the Google search engine may be a good indicator for suicide prevention policies. However, the tool is not developed enough to date to be used as a real time dynamic indicator of suicide epidemics. The frequency of the search for the word "suicide" was associated with those for "depression" but not for "bipolar disorder", but searches for psychiatric conditions seem to be influenced by media events more than by real events in the general population.
Mots clés
Bipolar Disorder, epidemiology, Cross-Sectional Studies, Depressive Disorder, Major, epidemiology, Health Policy, Humans, Imitative Behavior, Information Seeking Behavior, Internet, Mass Media, Risk Assessment, Search Engine, Semantics, Suicide, prevention & control, Suicide, Attempted, prevention & control
Référence
Psychiatry Res. 2015 Aug 30;228(3):913-7