Emerging Trends of Self-Harm Using Sodium Nitrite in an Online Suicide Community: Observational Study Using Natural...

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Toxicology
• Online Behavior Analysis

Background:

• Growing concern exists regarding sodium nitrite (SN) as an emerging suicide method, especially among younger populations.
• Traditional public health surveillance has limited data on SN-related suicide.
• Online suicide discussion forums offer a primary source for understanding SN use and procurement.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze trends in sodium nitrite (SN) purchase and use via online forum data mining.
• To identify substances and topics co-occurring with SN discussions.
• To determine the geographical distribution of SN users and procurement sources.

Main Methods:

• Data mining of publicly available posts from a suicide discussion forum (March 2018-October 2022).
• Application of natural language processing and machine learning for trend analysis.
• Development of a transformer-based classifier for SN source and location detection.

Main Results:

• Posts indicate a rise in SN popularity, with significant correlations to suicidal intent compared to CDC and NPDS data.
• Antiemetics, benzodiazepines, and acid regulators were frequently co-mentioned with SN.
• The developed classifier accurately identified SN sources (72.92%) and consumption locations globally.

Conclusions:

• Online forums provide crucial insights into emerging suicide mechanisms like sodium nitrite (SN).
• Data mining of these platforms can supplement traditional surveillance methods for public health.
• Understanding co-occurring substances and user geography aids in targeted prevention efforts.