Using Text Analytics at Work: Suicide Prevention and Crisis Management

Today “texting” is one of the principal means of communication for many people the world over, especially in the United States. It is also a form of communication that you can engage in relatively anonymously. These were a couple of the reasons why the non-profit, Crisis Text Line was started in 2013. One of the first people the new CEO Nancy Lublin hired, was a chief data scientist because there is a wealth of knowledge in all the text data being created that allows CTL to manage its operations more effectively by identifying people in immediate crisis and managing resources. CTL has constructed its own algorithms to analyze its text data but a similar analysis could be gleaned using a text mining software like WordStat. The following link is a Q & A article with CTL’s chief data scientist that gives you a good insight into what data CTL is capturing and how it is being used: The words and emojis we choose in our text messages say a lot about our mental health