Facebook activity can help identify people with mental illnesses

Facebook activity can be used to identify people with mood disorders and schizophrenia spectrum disorders more than a year prior to their first psychiatric hospitalization, according to research published in npj Schizophrenia.

Although these findings are not meant to substitute for clinical psychiatric assessments, the results suggest that social media data can be used in addition to clinical assessment to support decision-making.

“Much like an X-ray or blood test is used to inform health status, Facebook data, and the insights we gather, could one day serve to provide additional collateral, clinically meaningful patient information,” the researchers said in the report.