arXiv AI By Linhai Ma, Rita El Hachem, Mahatab El Hajj, Lilian Ghandour, Samah Fodeh

Assessing Suicide Risk in Arabic Crisis Helpline Calls: A Comparison of Arabic and English Large Language Models

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The study evaluates large language models for assessing suicide risk in Arabic crisis helpline calls, comparing Arabic and English models. Using de‑identified transcripts from Lebanon’s National Lifeline, the researchers fine‑tuned instruction‑tuned LLMs and transformer encoders, achieving a macro‑F1 of 81.19 and ROC‑AUC of 90.61 for high‑risk calls in Arabic, and 85.00/92.59 in English. The results show that high‑risk calls are more distinguishable than at‑risk calls, and translating to English does not degrade performance, indicating potential for operator‑facing tools.

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