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Predicting Depression Through Social Media

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Predictive Analytics of Psychological Disorders in Healthcare

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes on Data Engineering and Communications Technologies ((LNDECT,volume 128))

Abstract

Depression is a mood disorder, which can be described as having a feeling of sadness, anger, or loss that hinders the individual’s daily routine. Depression may cause lower efficiency and productivity at work; impact relationships and lead to severe health problems. Data analysis techniques for the detection of mental health problems have recently become an important subject for study in computer science research. However, advancements in this field are limited by the availability of the required information. In this paper, we review the usage of social media for the detection of depression in individuals. Social media platforms have recently increased in popularity and have become an essential part of everyone’s life. Social media has provided researchers with an enormous amount of information about the people’s life. Depressed individuals can be identified through their presence in online forums, their sharing of diagnosis, or by screening surveys. These individuals were found to be different from the control users in terms of their activity and language patterns. Therefore, through the posts of an individual on social media, the behavioral attributes of individuals such as language, emotion, social engagements can be measured. These attributes can be utilized in building classifiers for detecting depression in individuals. The results from experiments may be helpful for the detection of depression by healthcare companies, or by the patients in managing the disorder.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biotechnology, Delhi Technological University, Delhi, 110042, India

    Saurabh Biswas & Yasha Hasija

Authors
  1. Saurabh Biswas
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  2. Yasha Hasija
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Correspondence to Yasha Hasija .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Delhi Skill and Entrepreneurship University, New Delhi, India

    Mamta Mittal

  2. Department of Computer Engineering, J.C. Bose University of Science and Technology, YMCA, Faridabad, India

    Lalit Mohan Goyal

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The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest to report regarding the present study.

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Biswas, S., Hasija, Y. (2022). Predicting Depression Through Social Media. In: Mittal, M., Goyal, L.M. (eds) Predictive Analytics of Psychological Disorders in Healthcare. Lecture Notes on Data Engineering and Communications Technologies, vol 128. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-1724-0_6

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