A new machine learning model can detect early signs of depression in written text like Twitter posts, according to a study by University of Alberta computing scientists. "The outcome of our study is that we can build useful predictive models that can accurately identify depressive language," said graduate student Nawshad Farruque, who designed the model to identify linguistic clues in everyday communication. "While we are using the model to identify depressive language on Twitter, (it) can be easily applied to text from other domains for detecting depression." The English-language model was developed using samples of writing by individuals who identify as depressed on online depression forums. The machine learning algorithm was then trained to identify depressive language in tweets.

A new technology using artificial intelligence detects depressive language in social media posts more accurately than current systems and uses less data to do it. The technology, which was presented during the European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases, is the first of its kind to show that, to more accurately detect depressive language, small, high-quality data sets can be applied to deep learning, a commonly used AI approach that is typically data intensive. Previous psycholinguistic research has shown that the words we use in interaction with others on a daily basis are a good indicator of our mental and emotional state. Past attempts to apply deep learning techniques to detect and monitor depression in social media posts have been shown to be tedious and expensive, explained Nawshad Farruque, a University of Alberta Ph.D. student in computing science who is leading the new study. He explained that a Twitter post saying that somebody is depressed because Netflix is down isn't really expressing depression, so someone would need to "explain" this to the algorithm.

"Deep learning is usually very data hungry," said Farruque. "You basically need to feed your machine a lot of examples of what you're trying to teach it.

A new technology using artificial intelligence detects depressive language in social media posts more accurately than current systems and uses less data to do it. The technology, which was presented during the European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases, is the first of its kind to show that, to more accurately detect depressive language, small, high-quality data sets can be applied to deep learning, a commonly used AI approach that is typically data intensive. Previous psycholinguistic research has shown that the words we use in interaction with others on a daily basis are a good indicator of our mental and emotional state. Past attempts to apply deep learning techniques to detect and monitor depression in social media posts have been shown to be tedious and expensive, explained Nawshad Farruque, a University of Alberta PhD student in computing science who is leading the new study. He explained that a Twitter post saying that somebody is depressed because Netflix is down isn't really expressing depression, so someone would need to "explain" this to the algorithm.