Finding Signs of Health Woes in Facebook Postings

By Robert Preidt
HealthDay Reporter

THURSDAY, March 12, 2020 (HealthDay News) — Could clues to upcoming overall health emergencies be located in Facebook posts?

Possibly so, in accordance to a new review that uncovered there are alterations in users’ posts right before they seek crisis treatment.

For the review, scientists analyzed the Facebook posts and medical information of much more than two,900 patients at a U.S. urban medical center, such as 419 who’d experienced a recent crisis office pay a visit to for challenges ranging from upper body agony to pregnancy-similar problems.

Analysis of Facebook posts from as early as two.five months right before those patients’ crisis visits revealed that most experienced alterations in their language right before seeking crisis treatment.

Especially, they were a lot less most likely to publish about leisure or use words and phrases like “enjoy,” “entertaining” and “nap,” and a lot less most likely to use world-wide-web slang and casual language these kinds of as “u” as a substitute of “you,” the conclusions confirmed.

The nearer they got to their crisis office pay a visit to, the patients’ Facebook posts progressively centered on relatives and overall health. There was also amplified use of nervous, worrisome and frustrated language, in accordance to the review posted March 12 in the journal Character Scientific Stories.

The review suggests that social media posts might offer you clues about overall health challenges and could possibly be employed to discover and help folks, the scientists explained.

“The far better we understand the context in which folks are seeking treatment, the far better they can be attended to,” explained review creator Sharath Chandra Guntuku, a investigation scientist at the Penn Drugs Middle for Digital Wellness, in Philadelphia.

“When this investigation is in a quite early stage, it could possibly be employed to equally discover at-chance patients for speedy comply with-up or facilitate much more proactive messaging for patients reporting uncertainties about what to do right before a specific technique,” Guntuku extra in a University of Pennsylvania information release.

The lower in casual language “seems to go hand-in-hand” with an boost in anxiety-similar language, explained review co-creator H. Andrew Schwartz, an assistant professor of computer system science at Stony Brook University, in New York.

Guntuku pointed out that folks “feel to turn into much more grave and serious” when they are unwell.

“And on the lookout beyond the relatives mentions knowledge, it truly is possible that, when overall health is down, the want for belonging raises and reveals up in what a person posts on social media,” he concluded.