Pandora’s Bot: Insights from the Syntax and Semantics of Suicide Notes

Conversation agents (chat-bots) are becoming ubiquitous in many domains of everyday life, including physical and mental health and wellbeing. With the high rate of suicide in Australia, chat-bot developers are facing the challenge of dealing with statements related to mental ill-health, depression and suicide. Advancements in natural language processing could allow for sensitive, considered responses, provided suicidal discourse can be accurately detected. Here suicide notes are examined for consistent linguistic syntax and semantic patterns used by individuals in mental health distress. Paper contains distressing content.