Federal Project Grant Award Summary

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) awarded Massachusetts General Hospital $839,023 under the Mental Health Research Grants program (CFDA 93.242) on April 1, 2026, for research extending through December 31, 2030. This R01 Project Grant supports the development and validation of computer vision techniques to enhance suicide risk detection in emergency department settings. The research builds upon prior R21 exploratory findings and aims to create automated analysis systems that can assess physical tissue damage markers—particularly scars and markings from self-injury—to predict prospective suicide attempt risk among emergency department patients. The project will evaluate whether computer vision-derived signals from standardized skin images provide predictive utility beyond traditional self-reported measures of prior self-injury severity and existing electronic health record-based suicide risk algorithms currently deployed at Mass General Brigham.

The research directly addresses the critical public health need of identifying high-risk suicide cases among youth and young adults, for whom suicide represents the second leading cause of death. By leveraging objective imaging analysis rather than relying solely on patient self-reporting, the study seeks to improve clinician decision-making regarding appropriate levels of psychiatric care. The research team will further evaluate model performance across racial and ethnic minority populations to mitigate bias in the developed algorithms. This work represents a novel application of artificial intelligence in clinical psychiatry, translating computer vision technology from exploratory development into a validated clinical tool for emergency care settings.