This blog is reposted fromSpringeropen博客
When you’re feeling sad, the people around you probably know it. Moody playlists, slumped shoulders, drawn-out sighs – there are many ways we signal to the rest of the world when we’re having a down day. It’s not all that much of a stretch, then, to imagine your Instagram posts might look happier when you’re feeling happy, and sadder when you’re feeling sad.
如果您感到沮丧，但还不知道 - 您的抑郁症仍会以某种方式显示在您在线分享的照片中吗？这种可能性使我们思考：我们如何结合心理学家对抑郁症的了解，以及数据科学家对分析的了解，开发一种可量化的方法来评估Instagram的心理健康？
The results of our work suggest that early-warning signs of emerging mental health issues like depression can be observed in Instagram posts, even before any clinical diagnosis is made.
我们要求人们与我们分享他们的Instagram发布历史，以及有关他们的心理健康史的详细信息。根据设计，大约一半的研究参与者报告说，在过去三年中的某个时候，在临床上被诊断出患有抑郁症。总的来说，我们收集了43,950张照片，以进行分析。
抑郁个体在我们的样例10ded to post photos that were, on average, bluer, darker, and grayer than those posted by healthy individuals.
Using findings from clinical psychology research, we identified several visual and behavioral markers associated with depression that seemed like good candidates for measurement. For example, individuals suffering from depression exhibit different preferences for color, shading, and brightness in imagery, compared to healthy individuals. Pixel analysis of the photos in our dataset revealed that depressed individuals in our sample tended to post photos that were, on average, bluer, darker, and grayer than those posted by healthy individuals.
抑郁症的特征是减少或回避社交参与。社交参与涉及其他人，因此我们推测，社交性的一种粗略度量可能是您发布的照片中出现的平均人数。我们编写了一种面部检测算法，以计算每张照片中出现的面孔数量。事实证明，与健康的人相比，每张照片的沮丧人的面孔明显减少。
即使是沮丧和健康的人选择在Instagram上展示照片的方式也有所不同。Instagram提供了一系列现成的过滤器，以调整照片的外观。在健康的用户中，我们观察到最受欢迎的过滤器是瓦伦西亚，它给照片带来了更温暖，更明亮的感觉。但是，在沮丧的用户中，最受欢迎的过滤器是Inkwell，将其变成黑白。换句话说，患有抑郁症的人更有可能偏爱一种过滤器，该过滤器从字面上耗尽了他们想分享的图像中的所有颜色。
即使仅在收到一个沮丧的用户的帖子之前，我们也能够可靠地观察这些差异clinical diagnosis of depression。These and other recent findings (here，，，，here，，，，andhere）indicate that social media data may be a valuable resource for developing efficient, low-cost, and accurate predictive mental health screening methods.
我们确实强烈认为，必须在这些技术发展，数据隐私以及在在线媒体上应用复杂的分析工具的含义，这是一个重要的道德讨论，这不会忘记。即便如此，社交媒体分析可能会提供更快地获得帮助的方法的可能性很重要，应该进一步探讨。
I have a method question about this study, in particular about the screening process used.
The paper states “Separate surveys were created for depressed and healthy individuals. In the depressed survey, participants were invited to complete a survey that involved passing a series of inclusion criteria, responding to a standardized clinical depression survey, answering questions related to demographics and history of depression, and sharing social media history.” (Section 2.1, p.4). So the idea seems to be that the authors only wanted to include participants who had actually been diagnosed with depression at some point.
该论文继续“我们还排除了CES-D分数为22或更高的参与者。研究表明，CES-D分数为22，代表了在一系列年龄组和情况下识别临床相关抑郁症的最佳截止[31，32]”（第2.3节，第5页）。
From the APA: “The Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression (CES-D), originally published by Radloff in 1977, is a 20-item measure that asks caregivers to rate how often over the past week they experienced symptoms associated with depression, such as restless sleep, poor appetite, and feeling lonely.” So the CES-D is a measure of current experience of depression.
从补充信息（第四节）中，我注意到：“在沮丧的参与者中，有84个人成功完成了参与并提供了对其Instagram数据的访问。施加CES-D截止，将可行参与者的数量减少到71。”因此，在CES-D的临界值上方记录了13个抑郁的个体，因此被排除在外。
The purpose of cutoff point in a depression measure is to screen out individuals who may be putative cases in need of further attention. Such a screening tool is used to partition a population into ‘presumed well’ and ‘presumed ill’ (see Lewinsohn, Seeley, Roberts, & Allen, 1997).
因此，通过将这些人排除在这项研究中的想法之上，似乎是作者想分析在某个时候被诊断出患有抑郁症的人的Instagram照片 *，但目前没有经历抑郁症。从纸上来看，这并不是特别清楚，但它具有一定的意义。否则，我不明白为什么在一项有关抑郁症的研究中，您将排除最沮丧的参与者……
这是我将这些人排除在分析之外的唯一逻辑。但这确实提出了一个明显的问题： *这些参与者发生了什么？也许我错过了什么？
Critically, the study cites Haringsma, Engels, Beekman, & Spinhoven (2004, p. 561) as Reference 32, which states “In our opinion, subjects scoring >25 on the CES-D should be followed up with a diagnostic interview to specify clinical diagnosis and appropriate treatment.” What was the follow-up with these 13 participants, who had been previously diagnosed with depression, who were currently experiencing high levels of depression? I may have misread the paper but I cannot see any such reference in it.