Natural language processing in mental health applications using non-clinical texts
Author(s)
Calvo, RA
Milne, DN
Hussain, MS
Christensen, H
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Natural language processing (NLP) techniques can be used to make inferences about peoples' mental states from what they write on Facebook, Twitter and other social media. These inferences can then be used to create online pathways to direct people to health information and assistance and also to generate personalized interventions. Regrettably, the computational methods used to collect, process and utilize online writing data, as well as the evaluations of these techniques, are still dispersed in the literature. This paper provides a taxonomy of data sources and techniques that have been used for mental health support and intervention. Specifically, we review how social media and other data sources have been used to detect emotions and identify people who may be in need of psychological assistance; the computational techniques used in labeling and diagnosis; and finally, we discuss ways to generate and personalize mental health interventions. The overarching aim of this scoping review is to highlight areas of research where NLP has been applied in the mental health literature and to help develop a common language that draws together the fields of mental health, human-computer interaction and NLP.
Date Issued
2017-09-01
Date Acceptance
2016-11-17
Citation
Natural Language Engineering, 2017, 23 (5), pp.649-685
ISSN
1351-3249
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Start Page
649
End Page
685
Journal / Book Title
Natural Language Engineering
Volume
23
Issue
5
Copyright Statement
© 2017 Cambridge University Press. This is an Open Access
article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.
article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.
org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.
Subjects
Artificial Intelligence & Image Processing
0801 Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing
1702 Cognitive Sciences
2004 Linguistics
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2017-01-30