Now, doctors are seeking help of social media for early diagnosis of depression, shows study

Analysing language of Facebook posts can help doctors in diagnosing depression among the users, finds a study.

Now, social media can help doctors in diagnosing depression. Yes, you have heard right. Doctors are seeking help of social media to find a way of finding how many people are at risk of depression. A new study that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that analysing language from Facebook posts can indicate whether a user is depressed three months before the person receives a medical diagnosis, highlights a recent media report.

The group of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Stony Brook University stated that the research is still at its nascent stage. The study, based on a group of less than 700 users holds a promising future in diagnosing depression, they pointed out.

"Depression is a really debilitating disease, and we have treatments that can help people," reportedly said Raina Merchant, one of the study authors and director of the Penn Medicine Center for Digital Health. "We want to think of new ways to get people resources and identification for depression earlier," she added, according to the news report.

The model worked great when the researchers used Facebook data from the three months right before a participant got a depression diagnosis. However, considering longer periods of Facebook data made the model less precise, suggested the researchers.

We're at the very beginning of trying to understand how this data is sometimes people just saying hi to each other, but sometimes it can give us insight into the health of individuals and communities," Merchant reportedly said.