Suicide and Copycat Behavior: An Analysis with Hawkes Process of England and Wales Suicide Data

Sixuan Li
MS, 2021
Schoenberg, Frederic
Suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide. This thesis presents the application of Hawkes processes on suicide data from England and Wales since no paper has ever used the Hawkes process model on the analysis of such a topic before. I began by introducing background knowledge and a brief data description. After reviewing the concepts of the Hawkes process and of the general point process, I modified the marked Hawkes process model and applied it, in order to understand the suicide copycat behaviors or even suicide cascade phenomenon based on the data obtained. Two kernel functions were used to compare the predicted results. The Hawkes process model with the power-law kernel seems to provide a relatively more reliable prediction. With predictions, the corresponding preventative interventions were significant as well. Last, I provided an overview of the current analysis and offered further directions and future potential improvements on the explorations of this topic.
2021