Details:

• Alternative Title:
  Prev Med
• Personal Author:
  Miller, Adam Bryant ; Oppenheimer, Caroline W. ; Chew, Robert F. ; Weitzel, Kirsty J. ; D’Arcangelo, Brianna ; ... More +

  Miller, Adam Bryant ; Oppenheimer, Caroline W. ; Chew, Robert F. ; Weitzel, Kirsty J. ; D’Arcangelo, Brianna ; Barnes, Autumn ; Lowe, Ashley ; Yaros, Anna C. Less -
• Description:
  Background:
  
  Firearm violence represents a public health crisis in the United States. Yet, there is limited knowledge about how firearms are discussed in the context of mental health emergencies representing a major gap in the current research literature. This study addresses this gap by examining whether the content of mental health crisis text conversations that mention firearms differ from those that do not mention firearms in a large, unique dataset from a national crisis text line.
  
  Methods:
  
  We examined data from over 3.2 million conversations between texters to Crisis Text Line and volunteer crisis counselors between September 2018 and July 2022. We used a study developed text classification machine learning algorithm that builds on natural language processing to identify and label whether crisis conversations mentioned firearms. We compared the frequency of psychosocial factors between conversations that mention firearms with those that did not.
  
  Results:
  
  Results from a generalized linear mixed-effects model demonstrated that. conversations mentioning firearms more frequently were associated with suicide, racism, physical, sexual, emotional, and unspecified abuse, grief, concerns about a third party, substance use, bullying, gender and sexual identity, relationships, depression, and loneliness. Further, conversations mentioning firearms were less likely to be related to self-harm and eating/body image.
  
  Conclusions:
  
  These results offer an initial glimpse of how firearms are mentioned in the context of acute mental health emergencies, which has been completely absent in prior literature. Our results are preliminary and help sharpen our understanding of contextual factors surrounding mental health emergencies where a firearm is mentioned.
  
  
• Keywords:
  [+]

  Crisis Line Emergencies Firearms Guns Humans Mental Health Mental Health Crisis Racism Self-Injurious Behavior Suicide United States Violence
• Source:
  Prev Med. 177:107783
• Pubmed ID:
  37980956
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC10783174
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Funding:
  R01 CE003295/CE/NCIPC CDC HHSUnited States/
• Volume:
  177
• Collection(s):
  CDC Public Access
• Main Document Checksum:
  [+]

  urn:sha-512:6e844dbe67d965b27826ab43a1f6e3e051bd48ad1fd107771149f2d4ab1987675b9a8f2276d895a593a1bd5f177f26d71076616a0189231ee2e8f243180aa058
• File Type:

• Supporting Files:
  No Additional Files