Monitoring posts on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace could help to prevent suicide, according to two researchers from New Zealand’s Victoria University.

Dr. Tiong-Thye Goh and student assistant Yen-Pei Huang have developed a decision support system to scan social networking sites to flag keywords that people between the ages of 18 and 24 are posting. A high proportion of certain keywords could mean that a user is at risk of depression, suicide and other mental disorders.