Using Text Classification to Estimate the Depression Level of Reddit Users

Psychologists have used tests and carefully designed survey questions, such as Beck's Depression Inventory (BDI), to identify the presence of depression assess its severity level.On other hand, methods for automatic detection gained increasing interest since all information available in social media, Twitter Facebook, enables novel measurement based on language use.These learn characterize through natural use shown that, fact, usage can provide strong evidence detecting depressive people.However, not much attention has been paid measuring finer grain relationships between both aspects, how is connected with level depression.The present study a first step towards that direction.We train binary text classifier detect ``depressed'' users then we confidence value estimate user's clinical level.In order do our system be able fill standard BDI questionnaire users' behalf, only their posts Reddit.Our proposal was publicly tested eRisk 2019 task obtaining best second-best performance among 13 submitted models.