Suicide Is a Unique Topic,

¶ … Suicide is a unique topic, especially when dealing with forensic psychology. The purpose of this essay is to summarize a research study on the topic of suicide and how forensic psychology can apply to this study and under what circumstances a psychologist may use the information presented in the article to conduct evaluations on potentially suicidal patients.

McCarthy's (2010) article entitled " Internet Monitoring of Suicide Risk in the Population" is a very useful piece of research that can be used to a great extent for those working in forensic psychology. The author's premise of the article suggested that public health statistics are released too late, and when they are, the data is somewhat irrelevant. To help with this problem, McCarthy looked to internet search volume techniques, used in other disease control monitoring situations for an answer.

The research was quite simple but provided large amounts of useful information. The method used in this research was done through the search engine Google. "The terms "suicide," "teen suicide," "depression," "divorce" and "unemployment" were entered into Google Trends (Google Trends, 2009), an online log of internet search volumes. Results were limited to the United States. Search terms were chosen for their widespread use in the lay public and hypothesized relevance to suicide risk."

McCarthy soon found distinct cycles and patterns in the data he collected. During certain points of the year, suicide was Googled more often than others. Furthermore Search volumes for the terms "suicide" and "depression" were highly correlated with each other, as were "teen suicide" and "depression." McCarthy eventually concluded that "a connection between suicide and internet search activity has been supported, suggesting internet searches for suicide-related terms may predict actual self-injury and death."