Bill Hudenko On VOI.COM: Preventing Suicide With AI and Machine Learning

Dr. Mark Leeds [00:09] Welcome to The Rehab on the Mental Health News Radio Network. I am Dr. Mark Leeds and I will be your host. Join me in exploring the world of addiction treatment. How can we improve the ways that we help individuals to overcome addiction? The goal of treatment is to save lives and help people to get back on track to a path towards success and happiness in life. Today on the Rehab Podcast, my guest is Bill Hudenko, PhD. He’s a research assistant professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Dartmouth College, an adjunct assistant professor of clinical psychology at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine, and the CEO of VOI, Inc. Dr. Hudenko, welcome to the podcast. And please tell me more about VOI. What is VOI.com?

Bill Hudenko [01:16] So at VOI, we are a behavioral technology company with a pretty singular focus. And what we’re trying to do is to reduce suicide rates in the United States through the use of advanced technology and some novel approaches.

Dr. Mark Leeds [01:36] Okay, and on the website, it says that you use artificial intelligence. How is artificial intelligence used to, you know, what happens when a patient goes on the website or is, you know, when you go to voi.com, in fact, let me go to the page. There’s a tab at the top for patients, for students, for veterans. Suppose a patient or a doctor wants to test a patient and put them through this process. What would happen from beginning to end?

Bill Hudenko [02:11] Yeah, so at VOI we think about suicide as really being two problems. One is detection. So how do we determine if somebody is imminently at risk for suicide? And secondarily, we think about prevention. So when someone’s identified as high risk, how do we keep them safe from that point forward? So what we did is we developed two technologies. The first we call VOI Detect, which is our novel suicide risk detection tool. And then we developed VOI Reach, which is our suicide prevention tool. So with VOI Detect, VOI Detect is a screening tool. It consists of five to 11 questions that are given to a user. It takes less than two minutes to complete, and it will give a risk classification of low, medium, or high. And it’s the only tool that’s available that actually has very high predictive validity for imminent suicide risk relative to a trained psychiatrist, which basically means we can almost exactly replicate the gold standard of determining if somebody’s at risk because our classification accuracy is 0.94 or greater relative to a trained psychiatrist. And the way in which we use artificial intelligence in that tool is the scoring itself is based on what’s called a logic learning node. And that logic learning node is, it allows us to tie into an electronic medical record in a hospital so that if we get outcomes data over time, such as if someone actually contemplates or attempts suicide, it can adjust the scoring so that it gets more and more accurate and it learns over time. And it is the only tool that does that. So our prevention tool called VOI Reach is all about the idea that we know the most important factor for keeping someone safe once they’ve been identified at risk is to connect with that patient after they leave, let’s say the emergency department, and most importantly, to connect them with their own natural support network. So what would typically happen with reach is if a patient is identified as high risk, very often they will go to the hospital and then they’ll get discharged within 48 hours often and then go back into the same environment that often elicited that problem to begin with. So what we do is upon discharge, you can download the app. It instantly connects you with a behavioral health coach and a behavioral health coach populates in and asks you a very important question, which is, can you tell me a few people in your life who would help you to get better? The patient would then identify a few people in their life, and they together send out an invite to bring those people into this very close figure network of trusted individuals. We get a single release of information from the parent, from the patient, in order to speak with all of those people. And then we’re able to reach out both to the patient and to the natural support network and provide educational materials, to provide support and check-ins, and we can use artificial intelligence to continuously scan and monitor for risky language, which then basically allows us to instantly reach out to someone if we think that they’re in need. And so that’s why we call it VOI Reach, because we want to reach out to people before they need help or before they’re in that critical moment so that we can help to save lives.

Dr. Mark Leeds [06:01] Okay. And so this can be used for children. How young of a child? I would imagine definitely college age. Can it be used for high school, middle school, elementary school?

Bill Hudenko [06:14] Yes. So typically the danger, at least statistically, the real danger doesn’t really elevate substantially until around 12 or 13 for children. That’s not to say that there aren’t outlier cases, but also for technology and app use, there can be some difficult barriers when the child is below 12. So with our approach, if the child is 13 to 18, there’s just an additional step which would require that a parent sign an informed consent to allow the child to be on the platform and to interact. But yes, we think it’s a very important next step and next generation of helping to keep children safe as well.

Dr. Mark Leeds [07:04] Okay. And now if someone listening right now has a sorry, my screensaver just started. Sorry. If someone listening right now has a child 13 or up 13 to 18, 13 to 22, or of any age, and they’re concerned, you know, say the 13-year-old is locked up in the room on the phone all day playing with their computer on social media, and the parent is obviously concerned about this. Can a parent go sign their kid up for VOI and get them tested, or would they have to go through their doctor?

Bill Hudenko [07:40] Yeah, so right now, we don’t have kind of a direct consumer application that you would just download and use. And the main reason is because we need to have some kind of clinician on the other end or a behavioral health coach to support the user. So we have to contract with healthcare organizations who can provide that support while we provide the technology. So yes, generally they would have to be working through a healthcare provider who is using our tool.

Dr. Mark Leeds [08:12] Okay. And does a healthcare provider have to be local, or can it be someone, you know, can this be done over telemedicine? Could someone find a VOI provider or a VOI participating practitioner who’s maybe not in their area but is available by telemedicine?

Bill Hudenko [08:29] Yes. So definitely telemedicine is possible, and that’s part of the benefit of our tool is it’s very scalable. It’s a messaging-only platform. So it’s not video or audio. And that allows a clinician to see many, many people instead of just, you know, a handful because of time.

Dr. Mark Leeds [08:52] Okay. And what would be the best way for someone to find a participating practitioner, you know, a psychologist or therapist or MD or DO who’s able to provide the VOI service to them?

Bill Hudenko [09:07] So at the if the VOI Reach level we are really just expanding our platform right now and actually some of the greatest interest that we have in our tool comes from the military so we’re working right now through grants and other mechanisms to try to use veterans as our behavioral health coaches because it can provide them with jobs as well and also gives them a strong connection with the person who needs assistance. In terms of finding providers, the landscape now is really us going and finding partners who are interested in trying it, who are willing to use it. So right now we have a low user base, but we’re hoping that’s sort of our next horizon is expanding.

Dr. Mark Leeds [10:01] Okay. And can people reach out to you directly? Or who would someone reach out to maybe to ask, you know, for updates on local providers?

Bill Hudenko [10:10] Oh, yeah, that’s a great question. So on our website, we have a connect with us. […] and absolutely, yeah, go on to get more information. We can keep you up to date.

Dr. Mark Leeds [10:27] Okay, that’s great. And I wanted to also ask you about the connection between addiction and suicide. Drug addiction almost seems like a form of suicide or maybe a suicide substitute. Maybe a person is in a life situation that could drive them to being suicidal, and they take a different direction and pick up drugs and get addicted to drugs. Is there a connection between suicide and addiction?

Bill Hudenko [10:59] Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that we know is that the A risk factor for suicide is actually alcohol use and particularly alcohol use disorders, alcohol being much more than any other category of drug addiction. And there’s some complex ways in which that interacts. So the first thing is that alcohol itself is a depressant. And because of the category of drug, it means that potentially if somebody’s already having suicidal ideation, it potentially decreases their inhibition in terms of action. So that increases their risk and chance that they may act when they’re in that state. But you know in general I think part of the point that you’re making or that you’re asking about is this connection between you why someone utilizes substances to begin with or might get into a state of dependence and oftentimes I think we see that people use substances as a way to be coping with or managing pain and when I say pain I don’t mean that it has to be a broken leg or physical pain, but also very often emotional pain. And so it might be a way of changing your conscious state or escaping some kind of difficult pain that you might be in. And so consequently, very often you see people with substance use disorders who have a pain that they’re not able to face or feel like they’re, you know, that there’s a solution to. And that kind of frame of mind where you are thinking that there’s no way out and there’s no solution and only using substances is how I dull the pain from my experience obviously has a high correlation with people who also end up dying by suicide.

Dr. Mark Leeds [12:57] Okay yeah that makes sense and are there other specific mental illnesses that are associated with a high risk of suicide? For example I had another podcast guest whose wife had passed away from suicide and she had poorly treated and misdiagnosed bipolar disorder. Is that something that needs to be also screened for or is associated with suicide?

Bill Hudenko [13:22] Yes. Some of the top conditions that we know carry increased risk are bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, sometimes called unipolar depression. Schizophrenia has a higher rate of suicide. And actually, people who struggle with gender dysphoria or who have or going through a gender transition also tend to be at increased risk. Those are some of the disorders that have the highest comorbid rates of suicide.

Dr. Mark Leeds [13:55] Okay. And what about technology addiction, you know, kids who can’t get away from their phones and, you know, they’re deep into social media and maybe there’s cyberbullying involved or even adults who, you know, can’t look away from their phones even when they’re driving. Is there, have you seen any connection between technology overuse and addiction and suicide?

Bill Hudenko [14:19] Well, that’s an interesting area of research and inquiry right now. One that’s really just in its nascent stage because the prolific use of technology, if you think about cell phone use and apps and social media, it’s really a very new phenomenon historically. So we are learning more and more about that all the time. What I can say, I think with some confidence, is that it is a huge problem and one that we need to think carefully about how to remedy and what the impacts are on use in particular. And one of the things that we see is that children in particular and the mechanisms that are being used right now do have addictive-like qualities, and they’re in fact designed to make us want to use it more and more. And consequently, it can be easy for a child to get sucked into using too much technology. And the great irony, of course, is a lot of that time is on social media. And yet, even though you are talking to a lot of people, we are seeing from research studies that people who are using so much technology often feel more isolated, not less. So one of the real common theories around suicide and the state of mind that one might get in that results in suicide has to do with social isolation. That it is a major risk factor for suicide, that if we feel that we are disconnected from other people, then that is a potential problem. Which again is interesting in that our approach and with reach in particular is to use technology to combat this isolation but the way that we think about it is kind of technology for good in the sense of we want to provide people with meaningful and close relationships with people who care and while the delivery mechanism is digital it’s we are hoping a very different type of experience than something like social media.

Dr. Mark Leeds [16:25] Okay. Yeah, so VOI is definitely a safe place as opposed to some of these other, you know, like Facebook and games. And I even found an interview with a psychologist who has worked for different game producers. And apparently there’s psychologists that work for these companies that are on the other side that are consulting to help them make these products more addicting.

Bill Hudenko [16:50] Yes. Unfortunately.

Dr. Mark Leeds [16:53] Yeah. So, yeah. So that now, another thing I wanted to ask you about is, besides, you know, children for adults, are there certain professions that are at higher risk? Because I follow a doctor who’s online, who has a large following, who talks about doctors being one of the highest risk professions for suicide. And, you know, has compiled a list of doctors who have committed suicide. And of course, there’s the issue that doctors are afraid to ask for help because they can be disciplined or evaluated and restricted based on mental disorders. So do you see, are doctors at high risk or are there other professions that are at high risk for suicide?

Bill Hudenko [17:38] Yes, absolutely. You’re right that physicians are one area or one group that have particularly high rates, and there seems to be a lot of burnout that’s associated with that, and it seems to be increasing, not getting better. Actually, I think traditionally, dentists have had a higher rate of suicide as well. Also, the military. So interestingly, there’s a lot of debate about this particular point, but it’s been suggested that prior being in the military was actually a protective factor for preventing suicide. And rates of suicide in the military have only been increasing until at this point, they’re at least on par with the general population. And some researchers would say it’s actually a higher risk group now than even in the general population.

Dr. Mark Leeds [18:37] Oh, wow. And I know it was a big story in the news at one point where some companies in China were putting out suicide nets in their buildings to catch people if they tried jumping out the window.

Bill Hudenko [18:51] Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, I think that we’re at an interesting time in history around, in particular, the use of technology and how the technology itself might be increasing isolation in a way that’s potentially increasing rates of suicide. And again, I say these things in a slightly guarded way because most of the information that we have is relatively new, and also most information is correlational. So it’s hard to know if it’s actually causing an increase in rates, but there’s a lot of supposition that might be a strong contributing factor.

Dr. Mark Leeds [19:34] Okay. Okay. Now, as far as you had mentioned initiating a VOI assessment in the emergency department, the emergency room of a hospital, which is interesting because in the field that I work in, medication-assisted treatment of addiction, there’s been talk in a few pilot programs for implementing that kind of treatment in the emergency department, that when a person overdoses and they get taken in, if they overdose on an opioid, that the option of starting something like Suboxone treatment is given. And that could save a lot of lives because otherwise people may not know that something like that is available. You know, for example, in the case of Prince, you know, the famous musician showed up at an ER and was known to have had an overdose and a problem with opioid addiction and was released without being offered treatment and died a week later. And if patients in that situation had been offered treatment by the ER doctor right then, that the outcome could change dramatically for the better. Is it a similar situation with VOI? Is the ER the best place to start the evaluation?

Bill Hudenko [20:41] Yeah, that’s a great question. So we know that hospitals right now are being asked by the Joint Commission to do more and more suicide screenings. And actually it was back in 2015 that there was a sentinel alert from the Joint Commission and for those listening who might not be familiar the Joint Commission is one of the biggest accrediting bodies of the United States that kind of informs hospital policy and so in any event this alert said we need to be screening everyone who comes into the ED for suicide risk. And so hospitals started to scramble and think about, well, what could we do to meet this need? Unfortunately, there was a lot of pushback against the Joint Commission because of how difficult it is to add more burden to emergency departments and to be screening. And there was concern that they were going to actually find a lot more people who were actively suicidal, and then they weren’t staffed in order to handle it. So the Joint Commission actually pulled back the recommendation somewhat to only identify people who had an emergent profile. So someone who, let’s say, had alcohol use disorder or came in with a chief psychiatric concern that made them at higher risk that they would be screened. But just this year, I think the hospitals responded to that, and I think we’re getting even more support around universal screening again. So all that to say, that was sort of a long answer to your question, but what I wanted to say about that is that I’m a strong proponent of the idea of universal screening because we know that in a general ED population, about 5% of the population coming in will be at risk for suicide. And we know that about half of them, so about 2.5% of the population has no known psychiatric condition. So these could be people who just come in because they broke their leg, but they happen to also have active suicidal ideation. So we are missing a lot of people by not screening them. And I think that there’s great opportunity for us to improve the detection process, which is part of what we’re doing at VOI is thinking about how do we make this really easy, quick, and accurate in a population. And so the ED is certainly one place to do that, which I think is a great just because the number of people who come in. I also think primary care is another great place to do it. I think we should be doing universal screenings for many points of health contact for the military and even corrections education I just think there’s a lot of areas where people come into contact with some kind of health provider and in my view really assessing for suicide or screening for it should be we should think of it like taking someone’s blood pressure that when you come in you just you just get screened it’s simple and quick but yet it could save your life.

Dr. Mark Leeds [23:57] Okay. So it could be like another vital sign. And unlike pain, you know, when they started calling pain the sixth or fifth vital sign or whatever, and pain is not really a vital sign because it’s subjective. You know, you’re asking the person, how’s your pain? So you’re not really measuring anything. But in this case, we are measuring something. So this is an objective finding in an evaluation of a patient. Okay, great. Now, as far as educating physicians, I imagine there was a program, I don’t know if they still have it, that I think Indivior was providing with Suboxone that patients could get over-the-phone therapy because therapy is part of medication-assisted treatment. And there was a phone number they could call and get some kind of counseling. And I think it had to be patients who were prescribed that medication, but I’m not sure if that was a requirement. And the way that doctors found out about the program and the phone number was through their local drug rep that would come in to promote the product or their clinical liaison. Is that a possibility of VOI being associated with, for example, a current antidepressant that’s on the market that the drug rep comes in the doctor’s office and says, here’s a phone number where a patient can get evaluated by VOI?

Bill Hudenko [25:17] Oh, yeah, absolutely. We’re always actively looking at better ways to get screening done, at more effective pathways of care so that even at a CVS Minute Clinic or some other broad organization that has these healthcare contexts, I think that there’s a lot of opportunity. And indeed, you know, one of the struggles for us is that we want to make sure that if somebody does get screened, that they have a course of action in case we have a high screen come back. So what we’ve been working on is trying to always pair whatever screening services we provide with capabilities. And so that’s why a lot of our efforts have been on hospitals and healthcare organizations, because they’re tooled and prepared to manage if somebody’s at high risk. And that’s also why we don’t generally just provide our screener online available for anyone because if somebody screens as high, they’re at imminent risk and someone needs to help.

Dr. Mark Leeds [26:22] Okay. And that’s an important point. You know, what do you do with a positive result? Someone’s at high risk. And I would imagine there might even be people who are afraid to get started, You know, like a parent, you know, that they, well, a parent would, you know, I’m sure take their child for therapy, you know, the appropriate therapy afterwards. But, you know, say that a professional takes the test. Say, for example, a doctor takes it, you know, they’re asked to take it. They come out positive and now they may be concerned about, you know, monitoring or discipline or that sort of thing. Or even a doctor who administers a test and a positive comes back, and now they’re concerned about liability for handling the patient and what to do next. Do you help out with guiding the providers and what the next step is for treating a positive result?

Bill Hudenko [27:16] Yeah, absolutely. So when we give feedback on our risk classification, whether it’s low, medium, or high, we work with the healthcare organization when we first discuss this and help them to identify what their current plan of action is when somebody is in a risk state. And then we actually code it into our tool. So when it comes up, that means that unlike other tools, ours does not require an expert clinician to administer it. So anyone can give the tool, which then means it’s even more important that we have some guidelines on how to help. So those guidelines, of course, differ depending upon the organization. So for example, we have started working with schools and school is a very different type of setting than an emergency room. And so at an emergency room, they generally are tooled to deal with situations when someone might be at high risk. A school is not, and they don’t feel comfortable with what to do or whatnot. So in those settings, we might give them suggested guidelines for how to interact at different levels of risk. And of course, if somebody’s at imminent risk, meaning within 72 hours, then it’s generally you’re going to refer them to emergency services to get somebody immediate help and a more full psychiatric consult at the ED.

Dr. Mark Leeds [28:44] How fast does a, if a doctor, say, for example, in the Minute Clinic at CVS or the Clinic at Target or Walmart, how fast would they get the results back from the time that the patient finishes the process of the questionnaire?

Bill Hudenko [28:59] Well, that’s the beauty of our tool because generally it’s administered on an iPad or a tablet, but really could be any computer device. Since it’s a computerized tool, it’s automatically scored. So the moment that someone takes the tool, we have the result back.

Dr. Mark Leeds [29:18] Okay. Now, if someone comes out positive, now that means they are at risk for actually committing suicide and dying. And suppose that I have a patient, they take this test on the iPad in my office and the result comes back positive that they’re at risk. My thinking would be that I could refer them to a psychologist or psychiatrist I could recommend that they go to the ER I could call 9-1-1 even the Baker Act process to have them I guess involuntarily committed for a few days for treatment I mean you know what would be an inappropriate response or the best response in that situation

Bill Hudenko [29:58] So if somebody is at high risk at the time of screening. Either a psychiatric consult or direct admission to the ED would probably be warranted. And so it, again, would depend a bit on the resources of the particular physician. But if you say were to administer this and determine somebody was imminently at risk, you’d want to try to inquire a bit more and get some more information if you could from, again, a trained psychiatrist at that point, because while our algorithm matches psychiatric judgment, there’s other factors that you, of course, want to know about and to speak with the person about. So if you didn’t have access to psychiatric resources, you would try to get them admitted as soon as possible, which potentially might mean initiating the Baker Act for involuntary admission. Because, again, the point here is that it’s much better to act and be wrong than it is to not act and be wrong.

Dr. Mark Leeds [30:59] Okay, so this would be similar to a patient comes in complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath, and then you do an ECG in the office, and the result is abnormal. And so you have a high suspicion of a possible heart attack. And it seems like this would be a similar kind of a thing, you know, that it’s something to act on immediately and maybe overreacting a bit wouldn’t be the wrong thing to do. You know, like when we send someone to the ER and say, you know, go right away, you’re having chest pain, there’s something abnormal on your EKG, get checked out right away. And then they go in, and it turns out it was nothing but a panic attack. At least we were erring on the safe side. It seems like this would be a similar situation.

Bill Hudenko [31:42] No, you’re absolutely right. I think That’s a good analogy. And in fact, if somebody is screening as high, even if they, let’s pretend that we’re wrong and that they’re not actually going to end their life by suicide in the next 72 hours. Well, it still is generally the case that this person is in need of psychiatric services. So whether that means they would really benefit from medication or they would start benefiting from psychotherapy, it would be good to get them access to resources at that time.

Dr. Mark Leeds [32:13] Okay. And is it true that when someone comes in to a doctor’s office for the treatment of depression, that treating the depression can actually increase their risk of suicide?

Bill Hudenko [32:24] Yeah. So there’s been a lot of research and discussion about this over time, in particular around specific antidepressants. Antidepressants. So there were some big studies that came out suggesting that if you take certain antidepressants, you paradoxically increase your suicide risk. So to my, now I will clarify, I’m a psychologist and not a psychiatrist, so this is not my area of expertise. But from what I understand, it is actually a risk factor and thus labeled on some medications that might increase risk of suicide. So when these medications are prescribed, a psychiatrist, for example, will often want to check in frequently and be monitoring if there is an increase in suicidality.

Dr. Mark Leeds [33:18] Okay. Yeah. I remember in one lecture, it was explained as a person may be so depressed that they’re not even capable of acting on suicidal thoughts. And then when you take them just a little bit out of the depression. They’re still depressed, but now they have the ability to act on it. But I don’t know if that was just the lecturer’s own theory or if there’s anything behind that.

Bill Hudenko [33:39] I don’t think we know exactly with that level of granular detail about the causal mechanism, but I think that’s a plausible hypothesis and one that I’ve heard as well.

Dr. Mark Leeds [33:51] Okay. And now with other drugs, like say, for example, cocaine, amphetamines, And especially there’s the issue with amphetamine use in college. And these kids, when they take these drugs to stay up and study for days on end or hours and stay up all night, at some point they have a crash where there’s changes in the brain, neurotransmitters are depleted, and they may go into, I guess, a chemically induced depression. Maybe they weren’t depressed before. Are they at risk for suicide, maybe not understanding what’s happening to them?

Bill Hudenko [34:28] Well, yes, insofar as depression is a risk factor for suicide. And in fact, one of the diagnostic criteria of depression is related to suicide. So they’re intermixed. Now, a lot of this has to do with the characteristic of the thinking that happens when somebody is in a depressed state. So many, many people struggle with depression but don’t actually have suicidal ideation, whereas other people do. Or that’s a prominent feature of being depressed. So in a condition where somebody has a drug-induced type of depression, the probably best predictive factor is if they’ve had previous bouts of struggling with suicidal ideation. If under that condition it makes it more likely to occur again.

Dr. Mark Leeds [35:17] Okay. And what do you think of the Netflix program, 13 Reasons Why? I don’t know if you saw that. It’s all about teenage suicide. And I understand that recently they actually edited out the original suicide scene. When I watched it, there’s a scene, excuse me, a graphic scene where the girl commits suicide. And I understand they actually edited that out and found it was maybe a dangerous scene or uncomfortable scene for people to watch. And there was concern about the show actually, you know, increasing the rate of suicide of viewers.

Bill Hudenko [35:53] Yeah I haven’t actually seen it myself so I’ll preface my response with that but I will say that there is a lot of historical precedent of what is sometimes generically referred to as copycat suicides where somebody sees a representation of someone else ending their life by suicide and then copies it in one fashion or another. So part of the difficulty, especially with adolescents, is that most adolescents don’t have a big framework for understanding that if they’re in a very difficult time in their life, that it very likely will get better with time. And so, you know, I think for adolescents in particular, it’s part of the reason why they’re in the highest rate increase in the country right now is because they are put under a tremendous amount of stressors and now have these new kind of social media technology stressors, as you mentioned before. And they, let’s say, all of a sudden have a breakup with their girlfriend or boyfriend, and it seems like their life is over. And these kind of factors, which I think is what the Netflix series was getting at, is the 13 reasons or factors that contribute to somebody feeling hopeless and feeling like there is no other solution, that when you see somebody else present that as a possible out or a possible solution to a problem, of course it isn’t a solution to the problem, but for an adolescent it’s alluring. And so it does concern me. The short answer is, you know, it concerns me that giving a graphic portrayal or providing this as a potential solution to a problem is probably not a great idea.

Dr. Mark Leeds [37:52] Yeah, and in that show, a big part of it was rape. The girl ended up, you know, as the story progressed, and I’m sorry if I’m spoiling it for anybody, that was one of the main contributing factors that led her to getting very depressed, and she tried to reach out to her school counselor. But there was a rape scene. And I would imagine that, you know, domestic abuse, rape, you know, those kind of things would also be huge risk factors for suicide.

Bill Hudenko [38:26] Yeah exactly and the kind of situation that’s created where someone feels ashamed they feel like they don’t have anyone to speak with they and again tapping into this real concept of isolation and feeling alone with a problem is particularly difficult it increases risk

Dr. Mark Leeds [38:47] Yeah so okay yes I want to I want to wind up you know now and this is really incredible I mean the you know the access to this kind of a screening tool where someone could speak to a therapist that could be miles away who can handle a huge number of patients and use this artificial intelligence driven ai driven solution to evaluate and help to diagnose and resolve the issues of suicide and suicidal ideation. So thank you. Can you, can you repeat again the website or where people can sign up for updates to get more information?

Bill Hudenko [39:26] Yep. You can just go to voi.com, V O I.com and go to contact us and you should be able to reach out.

Dr. Mark Leeds [39:35] Okay, great. Dr. Hudenko. Thank you very much for joining me today.

Bill Hudenko [39:39] Thank you very much for your interest. And it’s been a pleasure.

Dr. Mark Leeds [39:46] Thank you for joining us today on The Rehab on the Mental Health News Radio Network. I hope that you have found this show to be interesting and useful. If so, please subscribe to The Rehab Podcast and share on social media. I appreciate your taking the time to listen to The Rehab. Thank you.