Abstract
Depression is one of the most growing health disorders, generating social and economic problems. The affective computing models focus on analyzing unique user posts, not observing temporal behavior patterns, which are essential to track changes and the evolution of emotional behavior and user context, that involves the persistent analysis of feelings and characteristics over time. This article proposes the TROAD framework for longitudinal recognition of sequential patterns from depressive users on social media. The framework identifies the best interval to analyze every user activity, extracts emotional and contextual features from user data, and models the features into time windows to recognize sequential patterns from depressive user behavior. The main characteristics of the users found in the top-10 rules are negative emotions: violence, pain, shame, depression, sadness, and silence. We obtained strong sequence patterns with a minimum of 70% of support, 81% of confidence, and 69% regarding sequential confidence, considering periods of silence between users' posts. Without considering silent periods, the rules showed 70%, 86%, and 38% of support, confidence, and sequential confidence. TROAD computational approach is a promising tool for clinical specialists in human behavior.
Highlights
IntroductionThe World Health Organization - WHO [1] estimates that 20% of the population will experience mood disorders at some point in life
D EPRESSION is one of the most prominent and growing disorders in the world
RESULTS we present the sequential patterns discovered with the application of TROAD over the user data collected from Reddit
Summary
The World Health Organization - WHO [1] estimates that 20% of the population will experience mood disorders at some point in life. Depression has been characterized as a mood disorder in which emotional and motivational conditions are the most compromised components. It comprehends many symptoms like a persistent feeling of sadness, a decrease of interest in engaging in activities that would be typically pleasurable, with impairment of routine and daily activities along two weeks at least. Mental health professionals have primarily used clinical examination techniques based on self-reporting of emotional, behavioral, and cognitive dimensions to diagnose and monitor the condition’s evolution. Examples of examination techniques are questionnaires, interviews, inventories, and other standardized instruments. Even though there are successful therapies for mental illnesses, between 76 and 85 percent of people in low and middle-income countries do not receive proper mental care [4]
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