Seoul St. Mary's Hospital joins project to build community-linked platform using AI analysis of psychological data

[Provided by Seoul St. Mary's Hospital]
[Provided by Seoul St. Mary's Hospital]

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

Yoo serves as principal investigator for a co-research institution on the project, overseeing a subproject focused on developing suicide prevention programs tailored to the developmental characteristics of children and adolescents and building an AI-based system for personalized risk assessment and intervention. The 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 collected from students — including depression, anxiety, trauma, family relationships and suicide risk levels. The goal is to generate individual risk and protective factor profiles and recommend prevention education content suited to each student.

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

The project will also develop developmentally appropriate suicide prevention education programs for elementary school students, covering emotional awareness, linking physical sensations to feelings, learning stress-coping strategies and safely seeking help. These programs are planned for expansion into online content and an AI-based platform.

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

"AI is not a technology to replace school counselors or medical professionals — it is a supplementary tool to detect students' warning signs more quickly and connect them to the right help," Yoo said. "Through this research, we aim to build a student suicide prevention model that can be practically applied 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.

If you are 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