The GW/UMD CLPsych 2016 Shared Task System

Suicide is the third leading cause for death for young people, and in an average U.S. high school classroom, 30% have experienced a long period of feeling hopeless, 20% have been bullied, 16.7% have seriously considered suicide, and 6.7% of students have actually made a suicide attempt.1 The 2016 ACL Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology (CLPsych) included a shared task focusing on classification of posts to ReachOut, an online information and support service that provides help to teens and young adults (aged 15-24) who are struggling with mental health issues.2 The primary goal of the shared task is to identify posts that require urgent attention and review from the ReachOut team (i.e. moderators).