Facebook could be used to spot those at risk of depression - because they talk more about themselves

Facebook could be used to spot those at risk of depression - months before symptoms emerge, research suggests.

Artificial intelligence found that heavy use of first-person pronouns like “I” and “me” as well as emotional language like “tears” and “feelings” was found among those later diagnosed with the condition.

US scientists said the algorhythm was able to spot such signs as early as three months before depression was evident.

Researchers said that in the long-term, they hoped social media could be used as a “form of  unobtrusive mental screening”.

In the six year study, the algorhythm scanned more than 524,292 Facebook updates of 683 people - a sixth with depression - and compared their use of language.

The algorithm was developed at the World Well-Being Project (WWBP) based at the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Centre and Stony Brook University's Human Language Analysis Lab.

Senior author Assistant Professor Andrew Schwartz said: "Social media is a dimension that's relatively untapped compared to biophysical markers of disease.

"What people write in social media and online captures an aspect of life that's very hard in medicine and research to access otherwise.

"Considering conditions such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD, for example, you find more signals in the way people express themselves digitally."

Johannes Eichstaedt, WWBP founding research scientist, said: "Social media data contain markers akin to the genome.

"With surprisingly similar methods to those used in genomics, we can comb social media data to find these markers.

"Depression appears to be something quite detectable in this way; it really changes people's use of social media in a way that something like skin disease or diabetes doesn't.

"The hope is that one day, these screening systems can be integrated into systems of care"

“This tool raises yellow flags; eventually the hope is that you could directly funnel people it identifies into scalable treatment modalities."

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Prof Schwartz said: "There's a perception that using social media is not good for one's mental health - but it may turn out to be an important tool for diagnosing, monitoring, and eventually treating it.

"Here, we've shown that it can be used with clinical records, a step toward improving mental health with social media."