«This application allows parents to anticipate and inform, sensitize, and prevent these behaviors so that the behavior of self-injury, as well as other mental health behaviors, is known. It also aims to raise awareness in society about the complexity of this behavior,» explained the project’s lead researcher, Esther Martínez Pastor.
For its use, the caregiver or parent must capture a photograph of a text written by the teenager before they began to show emotional changes and another of a recent text. The application will analyze and compare data such as pressure, strokes, spacing, or letters in both photographs.
After the analysis, the application’s algorithm detects changes in handwriting that may reflect mental health behaviors with probabilities of leading to self-injurious behaviors. In case of identifying significant alterations, it recommends on an urgency scale from 1 to 5 the need to visit a healthcare professional.
«This project represents a unique opportunity to address a problem, even before it occurs. Thanks to AI and the algorithms that bring ‘Hidden Strokes’ to life, we put technology at the service of something as important as the mental health of adolescents,» highlighted from the advertising agency VML The Cocktail, which has been involved in the creation of the application.
In the development of ‘Hidden Strokes,’ experts in Psychology, programming, and artificial intelligence have worked together. It will be an open-source software so that it can be implemented anywhere in the world. Currently, it is being trained and tested by the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.
14 MILLION SELF-INJURIES PER YEAR WORLDWIDE
Every year, at least 14 million episodes of self-injury are recorded worldwide, with a global rate of 60 per 100,000 people, as revealed by ‘The Lancet Commissions’ last year. The lifetime prevalence is 14 percent in children and adolescents and three percent in adults, with an onset age between 11 and 15 years.
In Spain, recorded self-injuries have increased by 56 times in the last 13 years, according to the ANAR Foundation, rising from 57 cases attended to 3,200. The Manantial Foundation revealed in 2023 that 11.7 percent of young people aged between 16 and 24 repeatedly self-injure, and 10 percent have done so at least once.
On the other hand, the Spanish Pediatric Association estimated a prevalence of 27.6 percent in 2022 and warns that adolescence is a period of special vulnerability, categorizing self-injuries as a serious public health problem. It also emphasizes that any young person is susceptible to going through a process of non-suicidal self-injury.