Facebook Posts May Point To Depression, Study Finds

People's Facebook posts might predict whether they are suffering from depression, researchers reported this week. From a report: The researchers found that the words people used seemed to indicate whether they would later be diagnosed with depression. The findings offer a way to flag people who may be in need of help, but they also raise important questions about people's health privacy, the team reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. People who were later clinically diagnosed with depression used more 'I' language, according to Johannes Eichstaedt of the University of Pennsylvania and his colleagues. They also used more words reflecting loneliness, sadness and hostility. 'We observed that users who ultimately had a diagnosis of depression used more first-person singular pronouns, suggesting a preoccupation with the self,' they wrote. That is an indicator of depression in some people. The team recruited 683 people who visited an emergency room for their study and asked to see their Facebook pages. Most were not depressed, but 114 had a depression diagnosis in their medical records.

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