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. 2024 Jan 11:2023:864-873.
eCollection 2023.

Characterizing Autism Spectrum Disorder and Predicting Suicide Risk for Pediatric Psychiatric Emergency Services Encounters

Katherine A Brown  1 , Kathleen R Donise  2   3 , Mary Kathryn Cancilliere  2   3 , Dilum P Aluthge  1 , Elizabeth S Chen  1
Affiliations

Characterizing Autism Spectrum Disorder and Predicting Suicide Risk for Pediatric Psychiatric Emergency Services Encounters

Katherine A Brown et al. AMIA Annu Symp Proc. .

Abstract

Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are at a higher risk for mental health concerns including suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STB). Limited studies have focused on suicidal risk factors that are more prevalent or unique to the population with ASD. This study sought to characterize and classify youth presenting to the psychiatric emergency department (ED) for a chief complaint of STB. The results of this study validated that a high number of patients with ASD present to the ED with STB. There were important differences in clinical characteristics to those with ASD versus those without. Clinical features that showed important impact in predicting high suicide risk in the ASD cases include elements of the mental status exam such as affect, trauma symptoms, abuse history, and auditory hallucinations. Focused attention is needed on these unique differences in ASD cases so that suicide risk level can be appropriately and promptly addressed.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Overview of Study Approach
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Clinical initial evaluation note template: section headers, subsections, and the regular expression options for extraction.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
ROC curves for the ASD and NonASD subgroups of the dataset. The true positive rate (sensitivity) is plotted against the false positive rate (1 - specificity) comparing four separate models (XGBoost, SVC, Random Forest, and Naïve Bayes). The ROC curve for XGBoost test set, the best performing model, is also plotted.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
SHAP plots for the top 25 feature rankings to compare the differences between the ASD and NonASD models.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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