Michiko Ueda-Ballmer is an associate professor in the Public Administration and International Affairs Department at the Maxwell School and is a senior research associate in the Center for Policy Research. Her research interests include social determinants of health, suicide prevention, mental health policy, public health and computational social science.

In her current projects, she examines the psychological conditions of distressed individuals through the analysis of crisis chat service data and social media using natural language processing; studies the consequences and determinants of loneliness and social isolation; investigates the impact of media (both traditional and social media) on suicide deaths and mental health; conducts online randomized controlled trials in diverse cultural settings to promote help-seeking behavior among distressed individuals; explores the effects of COVID-19 and food insecurity on mental health and suicide; measures the implicit level of loneliness in Japan and the United States using the IAT (Implicit Association Test); and examines the well-being of traditionally underrepresented groups in international STEM communities.

"Closing the Racial Wealth Gap Thought Leadership Partnership with Syracuse University's Lender Center", Sponsored by MetLife Foundation.

• Journal Articles
  • Ueda, M., Watanabe, K. and Sueki, H., "Emotional Distress During COVID-19 by Mental Health Conditions and Economic Vulnerability: Retrospective Analysis of Survey-Linked Twitter Data with a Semisupervised Machine Learning Algorithm." Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2023.
  • Sinyor, M., Hawton, K., Appleby, L., Armstrong, G., Ueda, M., Gunnell, D., Kapur, N., Chang, S. S., Arensman, E., O'Conner, R. C., John, A., Knipe, D., Phillips, M. R., Pirkis, J., Dandona, R., Chan, L. F., Bantjes, J., Borges, G., McKeon, R. and Niederkrotenthaler, T., "The coming global economic downturn and suicide: A call to action." Nature Mental Health, 2023.
  • Matsubayashi, T., Ishikawa, Y. and Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Economic Crisis and Mental Health during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan." Journal of Affective Disorders, 2022.
  • Matsubayashi, T., Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Is suicide underreported? Evidence from Japan." Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 2022.
  • Stickley, A., Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Loneliness in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic: prevalence, correlates and association with mental health." Psychiatry Research, 2022.
  • Badman, R. P., Nordström, R., Ueda-Ballmer, M. and Akaishi, R., "Perceptions of social rigidity predict loneliness across the Japanese population." Scientific Reports, 2022.
  • Sueki, H., Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Pre-pandemic suicidal ideation and COVID-19 preventive behavior: a prospective cohort study." Psychology, Health & Medicine, 2022.
  • Matsubayashi, T., Nordström, R. and Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Suicide and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan." Journal of Public Health, 2022.
  • Sinyor, M., Knipe, D., Borges, G., Ueda-Ballmer, M., Pirkis, J., Phillips, M. R. and Gunnell, D., "Suicide Risk and Prevention During the COVID-19 Pandemic: One Year On." Archives of Suicide Research, 2022.
  • Pirkis, J., Gunnell, D., Shin, S., Del Pozo-Banos, M., Arya, V., Aguilar, P. A., Appleby, L., Arafat, S. M., Arensman, E., Ayuso-Mateos, J. L., Balhara, Y. P., Bantjes, J., Baran, A., Behera, C., Bertolote, J., Borges, G., Bray, M., Brečić, P., Caine, E., Calati, R., Carli, V., Castelpietra, G., Chang, L. F., Chang, S. S., Colcherster, D., Coss-Guzmán, M., Crompton, D., Ćurković, M., Dandona, R., De Jaegere, E., De Leo, D., Deisenhammer, E. A., Dwyer, J., Erlangsen, A., Faust, J. S., Fornaro, M., Fortune, S., Garrett, A., Gentile, G., Gerstner, R., Gilissen, R., Gould, M., Gupta, S. K., Hawton, K., Holz, H., Kamenshcikov, I., Kanpur, N., Kasal, A., Khan, M., Kirtley, O. J., Knipe, D., Kõlves, K., Kölzer, S. C., Krivda, H., Leske, S., Madeddu, F., Marshall, A., Memon, A., Mittendorfer-Rutz, E., Nestadt, P., Neznanov, N., Niederkrotenhaler, T., Nielsen, E., Nordentoft, M., Oberlerchner, H., O'Connor, R. C., Papsdorf, R., Partonen, T., Phillpis, M. R., Platt, S., Portzky, G., Psota, G., Qin, P., Radeloff, D., Reif, A., Reif-Leonhard, C., Rezaeian, M., Román-Vázquez, N., Roskar, S., Rozanov, V., Sara, G., Scavacini, K., Schneider, B., Semenova, N., Sinyor, M., Tambuzzi, S., Townsend, E., Ueda-Ballmer, M., Wasserman, D., Webb, R. T., Winkler, P., Yip, P. S., Zalsman, G., Zoja, R., John, A. and Spittal, M. J., "Suicide numbers during the first 9-15 months of the COVID-19 pandemic compared with pre-existing trends: An interrupted time series analysis in 33 countries." eClinicalMedicine, 2022.
  • Veszteg, R., Yamakawa, K., Matsubayashi, T. and Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Acute stress does not affect economic behavior in the experimental laboratory." PLoS ONE, 2021.
  • Matsubayashi, T., Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Economic crisis and suicide during the COVID-19." Journal for the Japanese Society for Social Psychiatry, 2021.
  • Kawamoto, T., Aoki, T. and Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Graph-based open-ended survey on concerns related to COVID-19." PLoS ONE, 2021.
  • Jiang, W., Stickley, A. and Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Green space and suicide mortality in Japan: An ecological study." Social Science & Medicine, 2021.
  • Baran, A., Gerstner, R., Ueda-Ballmer, M. and Gmitrowicz, A., "Implementing real-time data suicide surveillance systems." Crisis, 2021.
  • Sueki, H., Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Short-term effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on suicidal ideation: A prospective cohort study." Crisis, 2021.
  • Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Suicide during the COVID-19 pandemic: Current status and prevention strategies." Japanese Journal of Clinical Psychology, 2021.
  • Pirkis, J., John, A., Shin, S., DelPozo Banos, M., Arya, V., Aguilar, P. A., Appleby, L., Arensman, E., Bantjes, J., Baran, A., Bertolote, J. M., Borges, G., Brečić, P., Caine, E., Castelpietra, G., Chang, S. S., Colchester, D., Crompton, D., Curkovic, M., Deisenhammer, E. A., Du, C., Dwyer, J., Erlangsen, A., Faust, J., Fortune, S., Garrett, A., George, D., Gerstner, R., Gilissen, R., Gould, M., Hawton, K., Holland, K., Kanter, J., Kanpur, N., Khan, M., Kirtley, O. J., Knipe, D., Kolves, K., Leske, S., Marahatta, K., Mittendorfer-Rutz, E., Neznanov, N., Niederkrotenthaler, T., Nielsen, E., Nordentoft, M., Oberlerchner, H., O'Connor, R. C., Osafo, J., Pearson, M., Phillips, M. R., Platt, S., Plener, P. L., George, P., Qin, P., Radeloff, D., Rados, C., Reif, A., Reif-Leonhard, C., Rozanov, V., Schlang, C., Schneider, B., Semenova, N., Sinyor, M., Townsend, E., Ueda-Ballmer, M., Vijayakumar, L., Weerasinghe, M., Zalsman, G., Gunnell, D. and Spittal, M. J., "Suicide trends in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic: Interrupted time series analysis of preliminary data from 21 countries." Lancet Psychiatry, 2021.
  • O'Shea, B. A., Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Who is more likely to ignore experts' advice related to COVID-19?." Preventive Medicine Reports, 2021.
  • Yasir Arafat, S. M., Khan, M. M., Niederkrotenthaler, T., Ueda-Ballmer, M. and Armstrong, G., "Assessing the quality of media reporting of suicide deaths in Bangladesh against World Health Organization guidelines." Crisis, 2020.
  • Stickley, A., Waldman, K., Ueda-Ballmer, M., Koyanagi, A., Sumiyoshi, T., Narita, Z., Inoue, Y., DeVylder, J. E. and Oh, H., "Childhood neglect and suicidal behavior: Findings from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication." Child Abuse & Neglect, 2020.
  • Fahey, R. A., Boo, J. and Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Covariance in diurnal patterns of suicide-related expressions on Twitter and recorded suicide deaths." Social Science and Medicine, 2020.
  • Stickley, A., Matsubayashi, T., Sueki, H. and Ueda-Ballmer, M., "COVID-19 preventive behaviours among people with anxiety and depressive symptoms: Findings from Japan." Public Health, 2020.
  • Matsubayashi, T., Sekijima, K. and Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Government spending, recession, and suicide: evidence from Japan." BMC Public Health, 2020.
  • Stickley, A., Matsubayashi, T. and Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Loneliness and COVID-19 preventive behaviours among Japanese adults." Journal of Public Health, 2020.
  • Ueda-Ballmer, M., Stickley, A., Sueki, H. and Matsubayashi, T., "Mental health status of the general population in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic." Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, 2020.
  • Sitckley, A., Koyanagi, A., Ueda-Ballmer, M., Waldman, K. and Oh, H., "Physical multimorbidity and suicidal behavior in the general population in the United States." Journal of Affective Disorders, 2020.
  • Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Japan’s suicide rate highlights the other health challenges stemming from the pandemic." Washington Post, 2020.
  • Ando, S., Usami, S., Matsubayashi, T., Ueda-Ballmer, M., Koike, S., Yamasaki, S., Fujikawa, S., Sasaki, T., Hiraiwa-Hasegawa, M., Patton, G., Kasai, K. and Nishida, A., "Age relative to school class peers and emotional well-being in 10-year-olds." PLoS ONE, 2019.
  • Boo, J., Matsubayashi, T. and Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Diurnal variation in suicide timing by age and gender." Journal of Affective Disorders, 2019.
  • Matsubayahi, T., Lee, M. and Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Higher Risk of Suicide on Milestone Birthdays: Evidence from Japan." Scientific Reports, 2019.
  • Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Learning data science through the prediction of the Upper House election: a report on the Waseda University Data Science Competition." Economic Seminar, 2019.
  • Ueda-Ballmer, M., Yoshikawa, K. and Matsubayashi, T., "Suicide by persons with foreign background in Japan." PLoS ONE, 2019.
• Discussion Papers
  • Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Who is most affected by Media Reporting of Suicide?: Evidence from Japan." Government of Japan, 2015.
  • Kawahara, K., Ueda-Ballmer, M., "Childbearing and Subjective Well-being in Japan." Government of Japan, 2013.

Department of Psychiatry, "Circumstances preceding suicide and homicide-suicide deaths in the United States" (November, 2023)

Canada's 3rd Forum on Media and Suicide, "Media and Suicide in other parts of the world" (November, 2023)

International Associate for Suicide Prevention, "Understanding the Werther effect using crisis chat service text data " (September, 2023)

International Association for Suicide Prevention 10th Asia Pacific Conference, International Association for Suicide Prevention, "Female suicides during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan" (May, 2022)

57th National Congress Psychiatric Association of Turkey (October, 2021)

World Congress of the International Association for Suicide Prevention, International Association for Suicide Prevention, "Tracking suicide deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic: Real-time suicide data in Japan" (September, 2021)

World Congress of the International Association for Suicide Prevention, International Association for Suicide Prevention, "“Social media and suicide prevention: a panel discussion" (September, 2021)

Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum Berlin (June, 2021)

Stockholm Explorative Talks: Growing up during a pandemic (June, 2021)

Daiwa Anglo-Japan Foundation (May, 2021)

Ueda-Ballmer, M., Kawamoro, T., Aoki, T., Annual Meeting of the Physical Society of Japan, Physical Society of Japan, "Graph-based open-ended survey on concerns related to COVID-19" (March, 2021)

Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan (February, 2021)