Webinar Series
NEXT UP: August 14, 2024 at 12-1PM
Natural Language Processing and Suicidal Ideation
with Cheryl Corcoran, MD
Purpose Statement:
The purpose of this live, knowledge-based virtual presentation for interprofessional healthcare teams is to understand how to interpret and utilize information from studies around natural language processing to characterize natural spoken language with attention to linguistics and acoustic sounds on Veterans with and without suicidal ideation. This presentation aims to fill the knowledge gap by providing information that’s an untapped easily accessed resource for studying thought and emotion related to suicidal ideation, which is now assessed only through clinical ratings. Participants will learn how to interpret these types of studies, and even learn how to do these studies themselves. This will result in better Veteran care.
Outcome/Objectives:
At the conclusion of this educational program, learners will be able to:
1. define natural language processing and how it may be used to study correlates of suicidal ideation;
2. describe the literature on natural language processing studies of suicidal ideation; and
3. describe how acoustic features of spoken language can also be used to characterize suicidal ideation.
Program Description:
The VISN 2 Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Centers (MIRECC) pursues a discovery-to-recovery approach to determine the causes, identify predictors, and develop treatments for individuals with SMI, with emphasis on psychosis and on suicide. The topics for this series consist of innovative treatments that we have created/tested and insights from research that have helped to inform clinical care.
Target Audience (1 CE Per Webinar):
Physicians, Psychologists, Social Workers, Nurses, Counselors, and Therapists
Registration:
VA Providers (TMS #131010811)
Non-VA Providers (TRAIN #1121757)
PRESENTER:
Cheryl Corcoran, MD received her MD from Harvard Medical School. She completed her internship and residency in adult psychiatry at The Cambridge Health Alliance, a research fellowship in Schizophrenia Research at Columbia University, and a master’s degree in biostatistics at the Mailman School of Public Health. She is currently associate professor of psychiatry and program leader in psychosis risk at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Corcoran also was named a NAMI Exemplary Psychiatrist in 2022. Dr. Corcoran uses computational phenotyping – natural language processing (NLP), acoustic analytics and computer vision – to characterize communication behavior and its correlates with suicidal ideation and behavior, and with symptoms and behavior across syndromes, including schizophrenia, autism, mood disorders and Alzheimer’s dementia. At the MIRECC, Dr. Corcoran has collaborated in NLP analyses with Drs. Hazlett, Szeszko and Chan, and has provided mentoring to MIRECC fellows; these analyses form the basis for a MERIT application to use NLP together with physiological studies to better understand suicidal ideation and behavior in veterans. At Mount Sinai, Dr. Corcoran has federal funding to characterize communication behavior in teens and young adults who are seeking outpatient mental health treatment for the first time, so as to predict treatment disengagement and crisis intervention, and also to set up a laboratory for physiological studies of communication behavior across the lifespan. Further, she has federal funding to study both communication behavior and the circuit basis of reward and salience processing across stages of schizophrenia, including its clinical risk states. Dr. Corcoran is a site lead for the Schizophrenia Spectrum Biomarkers Consortium, which focuses on fluid biomarkers in blood and cerebrospinal fluid to investigate models of schizophrenia pathophysiology. Earlier in her career, Dr. Corcoran studied the role of stress and drug use in onset and symptom expression in schizophrenia, as well as stigma and paths to prevention and recovery, and used non-invasive brain stimulation for cognitive mapping and to identify targets and circuits for therapeutic neurostimulation.
Accreditations: ACCME, ACCME-NP, APA, ASWB, JA IPCE, NBCC, NYSED SW, NYSED-Psychology
Additional Information for TMS Registration:
Questions?
Non-VA employees, please contact the VHA TRAIN Help Desk by email at VHATRAIN@va.gov.
VA employees, please contact Lauran Hardy at Lauran.Hardy@va.gov.
Last updated: July 23, 2024
