Facebook posts can help predict users' depression diagnosis

Language people use in their Facebook posts can predict a future diagnosis of depression as accurately as the tools clinicians use in medical settings to screen for the disease, suggests new research.

"Social media data contain markers akin to the genome," said one of the researchers Johannes Eichstaedt from University of Pennsylvania in the US.

"With surprisingly similar methods to those used in genomics, we can comb social media data to find these markers. Depression appears to be something quite detectable in this way," Eichstaedt said.

For the study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the researchers identified data from nearly 1,200 people consenting to share Facebook statuses and electronic medical-record information.

They then analysed the statuses using Machine Learning techniques to distinguish those with a formal depression diagnosis.

Analysing social media data shared by the participants across the months leading up to a depression diagnosis, the researchers found their algorithm could accurately predict future depression. Read Complete Article

Business Standard