Bathina et al. (2021) investigated whether people with a diagnosis of depression use different language to nondepressed people. Two-hundred and forty-one phrases representing cognitive distortions were identified and their frequency of use compared on social media in matched groups of depressed and non-depressed participants. Phrases indicating cognitive distortions, in particular personalising, emotional reasoning and overgeneralising, were significantly more commonly used by the depressed group. This suggests a role for social media in diagnosing depression.
Bathina, K. C., ten Thij, M., Lorenzo-Luaces, L. et al. (2021) ‘Individuals with depression express more distorted thinking on social media’, National Human Behaviour, Vol. 5, pp. 458–66.
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