Hospital to lead research on AI-powered student suicide prevention platform

Program to expand into online content with developmentally tailored curriculum

Prof. Yoo Jae-hyun of the psychiatry department at Seoul St. Mary's Hospital. [Seoul St. Mary's Hospital]
Prof. Yoo Jae-hyun of the psychiatry department at Seoul St. Mary's Hospital. [Seoul St. Mary's Hospital]

Seoul St. Mary's Hospital of the Catholic University of Korea announced Friday that psychiatry professor Yoo Jae-hyun has begun work on a research project to develop a community network-based, AI-powered personalized student suicide prevention platform, selected under the Ministry of Health and Welfare's "Technology Development for Solving Social Problems Related to Suicide" initiative.

Yoo serves as the principal investigator for a co-research institution and leads a sub-task focused on developing suicide prevention programs that reflect the developmental characteristics of children and adolescents, as well as building an AI-based system for personalized risk assessment and intervention. The project's overall lead researcher is Yang Chan-mo, a professor of psychiatry at Wonkwang University Hospital.

The project goes beyond conventional one-time suicide prevention education by using AI to analyze multidimensional psychological data — including students' depression, anxiety, trauma, family relationships and suicide risk levels. The goal is to generate individual risk and protective factor profiles and recommend tailored prevention education content for each student.

Through emotional monitoring activities for children and adolescents, the system aims to detect early signs of emotional crisis that students may struggle to express directly. When high-risk signals are identified, the platform will connect students to a community safety network spanning schools, Wee Centers, mental health welfare centers, suicide prevention centers and hospitals.

For elementary school students in particular, the team plans to develop a developmentally appropriate suicide prevention curriculum covering emotional awareness, connecting physical sensations to feelings, learning stress-coping strategies, and safely seeking help. The program will then be expanded into online content and an AI-based platform.

The research is significant not only for identifying individual students' psychological states early, but also for establishing a coordinated response system involving both schools and the broader community. AI-driven analysis will be used to recommend prevention education and intervention strategies tailored to each student's profile, helping identify at-risk students more quickly and connect them with appropriate support.

"AI is not a technology that replaces school counselors or medical professionals — it is a supplementary tool to detect students' warning signs faster and connect them to the right help," Yoo said. "Through this research, we aim to build a student suicide prevention model that can actually be used in schools, grounded in early detection, personalized intervention and community linkage."

The research comes against the backdrop of a sharp rise in mental health problems among children and adolescents in recent years. Childhood depression, which is closely linked to suicide-related issues in young people, is among the fastest-growing mental health conditions in South Korea.

The number of children and adolescents between the ages of 7 and 18 treated for depression in 2023 reached 53,070 — a roughly 75.8 percent increase from 2018. Difficulty regulating emotions caused by depression can manifest as crying, anger and irritability. When those feelings go unacknowledged and suppressed, they can lead to school refusal, self-harm or suicidal behavior, somatic symptoms and addiction.

If you're thinking about self-harm or suicide, contact the Ministry of Health and Welfare's helpline 1393, available 24/7. Please request a translator for English-language services.


woo@heraldcorp.com