Depression is a leading cause of disability worldwide, but is often under-diagnosed and under-treated. One of the tenets of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is that individuals who are depressed exhibit distorted modes of thinking, so-called cognitive distortions, which can negatively affect their emotions and motivation. Here, we show that individuals with a self-reported diagnosis of depression on social media express higher levels of distorted thinking than a random sample. Some types of distorted thinking were found to be more than twice as prevalent in our depressed cohort, in particular Personalizing and Emotional Reasoning. This effect is specific to the distorted content of the expression and can not be explained by the presence of specific topics, sentiment, or first-person pronouns. Our results point towards the detection, and possibly mitigation, of patterns of online language that are generally deemed depressogenic. They may also provide insight into recent observations that social media usage can have a negative impact on mental health.

社交媒体上诊断为抑郁症患者的个体表现出较高的认知失调水平，尤其是个人化和情感推理，这种失调效应特定于表达的内容，可能会成为公认的导致抑郁症的在线语言模式的检测和缓解的依据，并有助于解释社交媒体对心理健康的负面影响。

抑郁症患者在社交媒体上表现出更多扭曲的思维