Would Mental Illness Be Revealed By Facebook?

Facebook profiles may reveal mental illness

A recent study has found that a person’s profile on Facebook may reveal signs of mental illness that might not necessarily emerge in a session with a psychiatrist.

According to study researcher Elizabeth Martin, a psychology doctoral student at the University of Missouri, social media activity when used as a tool in psychological diagnosis can remove some of the problems associated with patients.

“For example, questionnaires often depend on a person’s memory, which may or may not be accurate. By asking patients to share their Facebook activity, we were able to see how they expressed themselves naturally,” said study researcher Elizabeth Martin.

“Even the parts of their Facebook activities that they chose to conceal exposed information about their psychological state,” said Martin.

Martin’s team researched on more than 200 college students and had them fill out questionnaires to evaluate their levels of extroversion, paranoia, enjoyment of social interactions, and endorsement of strange beliefs.

The students were asked to log on to their facebook profiles. They were told they would have the option to black-out parts of their profile before some of it was printed out for the researchers to examine.

By asking patients to share their Facebook activity, the researchers were able to see how they expressed themselves naturally.

Even the parts of their Facebook activities that they chose to conceal exposed information about their psychological state, Martin explained.

Participants who showed higher levels of social anhedonia -a condition characterized by lack of pleasure from social interactions- genrally carrying fewer Facebook friends, shared fewer photos, and communicated less frequently on the site, the researchers found.

These participants also showed schizotypy symptoms, known as perceptual aberrations, which are anomalous experiences of one’s senses, and magical ideation, which is the belief that events with no physical cause-and-effect are somehow causally connected.

Hiding Facebook activity also was considered a sign of higher levels of paranoia.

However, it should be noted that participants higher on paranoia did not differ from participants lower in paranoia in terms of the amount of personal information shared, the researchers wrote in their study detailed Dec. 30, 2012, in the journal Psychiatry Research.

The outcome shows that this group is more interested in showing  their problems socially among friends then to a Psychiatrist.

The researchers said information culled from social networking sites potentially could be used to inform diagnostic materials or intervention strategies for people with mental health issues.

“Social media profiles could eventually be used as tools for psychologists and therapists,” according to Martin.

“Therapists could possibly use social media activity to create a more complete clinical picture of a patient,” Martin added to his statement.

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