scholarly journals Socio-economic inequality in anthropometric failure among children aged under 5 years in India: evidence from the Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey 2016–18

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Akash Porwal ◽  
Rajib Acharya ◽  
Sana Ashraf ◽  
Praween Agarwal ◽  
Sowmya Ramesh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Composite Index ◽  
Decomposition Analysis ◽  
World Health ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Outcome Variable ◽  
Nutrition Survey ◽  
National Nutrition Survey ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Nutritional Status Of Children

Abstract Background Conventional indicators used to access the nutritional status of children tend to underestimate the overall undernutrition in the presence of multiple anthropometric failures. Further, factors contributing to the rich-poor gap in the composite index of anthropometric failure (CIAF) have not been explored. This study aims to estimate the prevalence of CIAF and quantify the contribution of factors that explain the rich-poor gap in CIAF. Methods The present study used data of 38,060 children under the age of five years and their biological mothers, drawn from the nationally representative Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey of children and adolescents aged 0–19 years in India. The CIAF outcome variable in this study provide an overall prevalence of undernutrition, with six mutually exclusive anthropometric measurements of height-for-age, height-for-weight, and weight-for-age, calculated using the World Health Organization (WHO) Multicenter Growth Reference Study. Multivariate regression and decomposition analysis were used to examine the association between covariates with CIAF and to estimate the contribution of different covariates in the existing rich-poor gap. Results An overall CIAF prevalence of 48.2% among children aged aged under 5 years of age was found in this study. 6.0% children had all three forms of anthropometric failures. The odds of CIAF were more likely among children belonging to poorest households (AOR: 2.41, 95% CI: 2.12–2.75) and those residing in urban area (AOR: 1.06, 95% CI 1.00–1.11). Children of underweight mothers and those with high parity were at higher risk of CIAF (AOR: 1.51, 95% CI: 1.42–1.61) and (AOR: 1.15, 95% CI: 1.08–1.22), respectively. Children of mother exposed to mass media were at lower risk of CIAF (AOR: 0.87, 95% CI: 0.81–0.93). Conclusion This study estimated a composite index to assess the overall anthropometric failure, which also provides a broader understanding of the extent and pattern of undernutrition among children. Findings show that maternal covariates contribute the most to the rich-poor gap. As well, the findings suggest that intervention programs with a targeted approach are crucial to reach the most vulnerable groups and to reduce the overall burden of undernutrition.

Socio-economic inequality in anthropometry failure in children under 5 years in India: Evidence from the Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey 2016–18

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akash Porwal ◽  
Rajib Acharya ◽  
Sana Ashraf ◽  
Praween Kumar Agarwal ◽  
Sowmya Ramesh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Composite Index ◽  
Decomposition Analysis ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Nutrition Survey ◽  
Biological Mothers ◽  
National Nutrition Survey ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Nutritional Status Of Children ◽  
Height For Age

Abstract Background Conventional indicators used to access the nutritional status of children tend to underestimate the overall undernutrition in the presence of multiple anthropometric failures. Further, factors contributing to the rich-poor gap in the composite index of anthropometric failure (CIAF) have not been explored. Objective To estimate the prevalence of CIAF and quantify the contribution of factors that explain the rich-poor gap in CIAF. Methods The present study used data of 38,060 children under the age of five and their biological mothers, drawn from the nationally representative Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey of children and adolescents aged 0–19 years in India. The CIAF outcome variables in this study provide an overall prevalence of undernutrition, with six mutually exclusive anthropometric measurements of height-for‐age, height‐for‐weight, and weight‐for‐age, calculated using the WHO Multicenter Growth Reference Study. Multivariate regression and decomposition analysis were used to examine the association between covariates with CIAF and to estimate the contribution of different covariates in the existing rich-poor gap. Results An overall CIAF prevalence of 48.2% among children aged 0–4 years was found in this study. 6.0% children had all three forms of anthropometric failures. The odds of CIAF were more likely among children belonging to poorest households (AOR: 2.41, 95% CI: 2.12–2.75) and those residing in urban area (AOR: 1.06, 95% CI 1.00-1.11). Children of underweight mothers and those with high parity were at higher risk of CIAF (AOR: 1.51, 95% CI: 1.42–1.61) and (AOR: 1.15, 95% CI: 1.08–1.22), respectively. Children of mother exposed to mass media were at lower risk of CIAF (AOR: 0.87, 95% CI: 0.81–0.93). Conclusion This study estimated a composite index to assess the overall anthropometric failure, which also provides a broader understanding of the extent and pattern of undernutrition among children. Findings show that maternal covariates contribute the most to the rich-poor gap. As well, the findings suggest that intervention programs with a targeted approach are crucial to reach the most vulnerable groups and to reduce the overall burden of undernutrition.

HUBUNGAN ANTARA PENDIDIKAN DAN SOSIAL EKONOMI KELUARGA DENGAN STATUS GIZI BALITA DI PUSKESMAS KERAMASAN PALEMBANG TAHUN 2012

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dini Kesumah Dini Kesumah
Keyword(s):  
Nutritional Status ◽  
World Health Organization ◽  
Health Center ◽  
World Health ◽  
P Value ◽  
Chi Square ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Nutritional Status Of Children

ABSTRACT According to World Health Organization Health Organization (WHO) in 2005 showed 49% of deaths occur in children under five in developing countries. Nutritional problems can not be done with the medical and health care approach alone. Causes related to malnutrition that maternal education, socioeconomic families, poor environmental sanitation, and lack of food supplies. This study aims to determine the relationship between education and socioeconomic status of families with nutrition survey using a cross sectional analytic approach, with a population of all mothers of children under five who visited the health center in Palembang Keramasan Accidental sampling Sampling the number of samples obtained 35 respondents. Variables include the study independent and dependent variables and univariate analysis using Chi-Square test statistic with a significance level α = 0.05. The results from 35 respondents indicate that highly educated mothers earned as many as 16 people (45.7%), and middle and upper income families as many as 12 people (34.3%) and bivariate test results show that highly educated respondents toddler nutritional status good for 81.3% (13 people) is larger than the less educated respondents balitanya good nutritional status 26.3% (5 persons) as well as respondents who have middle and upper socioeconomic families with good nutritional status of children at 91.7% ( 11 people) is larger when compared to respondents who have family socioeconomic medium with good nutritional status of children at 30.4% (7 people). Statistical tests show that education has a significant relationship with nutritional status of children P value = 0.004 and socioeconomic families have a meaningful relationship with nutritional status of children P value = 0.002. Based on the results of the study suggested the health professionals in the health center should further improve the education, information about the importance of nutrition to the development of the child in the mothers through the selection and processing of good food and a good diet through health centers and integrated health.   ABSTRAK  Menurut badan kesehatan World Health Organization (WHO) tahun 2005 menunjukkan 49% kematian yang terjadi pada anak dibawah umur lima tahun di negara berkembang. Masalah gizi ini tidak dapat dilakukan dengan pendekatan medis dan pelayanan kesehatan saja. Penyebab yang berhubungan dengan kurang gizi yaitu pendidikan ibu, sosial ekonomi keluarga, sanitasi lingkungan yang kurang baik,dan kurangnya persediaan pangan. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui hubungan antara pendidikan dan sosial ekonomi keluarga dengan status gizi balita dengan menggunakan metode survei analitik pendekatan secara Cross Sectional, dengan populasi semua ibu yang memiliki anak balita yang berkunjung ke Puskesmas Keramasan Palembang dengan pengambilan sampel secara Accidental Sampling diperoleh jumlah sampel 35 responden. Variabel penelitian meliputi variabel independen dan dependen serta analisis univariat menggunakan uji statistik Chi-Square dengan tingkat kemaknaan α = 0,05. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan dari 35 responden didapatkan ibu yang berpendidikan tinggi sebanyak 16 orang  (45,7%), dan keluarga yang berpenghasilan menengah keatas sebanyak 12 orang (34,3%) dan hasil uji bivariat menunjukkan bahwa responden yang berpendidikan tinggi status gizi balitanya baik sebesar 81,3% (13 orang) lebih besar bila dibanding responden yang berpendidikan rendah status gizi balitanya baik 26,3% (5 orang) serta responden yang mempunyai sosial ekonomi keluarga menengah keatas dengan status gizi balita baik sebesar 91,7% (11 orang) lebih besar bila dibanding responden yang mempunyai sosial ekonomi keluarga menengah kebawah dengan status gizi balita baik sebesar 30,4% (7 orang). Uji statistik menunjukkan bahwa pendidikan mempunyai hubungan yang bermakna dengan status gizi balita P value = 0,004 dan sosial ekonomi keluarga mempunyai hubungan yang bermakna dengan status gizi balita P value = 0,002. Berdasarkan hasil penelitian disarankan pada petugas kesehatan di Puskesmas hendaknya lebih meningkatkan penyuluhan-penyuluhan tentang pentingnya gizi terhadap tumbuh kembang anak pada ibu-ibu melalui cara pemilihan dan pengolahan bahan makanan yang baik serta pola makanan yang baik melalui kegiatan Puskesmas dan Posyandu.

scholarly journals Violence and discrimination among Ugandan residents during the COVID-19 lockdown

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Katana ◽  
Bob Omoda Amodan ◽  
Lilian Bulage ◽  
Alex R. Ario ◽  
Joseph Nelson Siewe Fodjo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Law Enforcement ◽  
Control Measures ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
World Health ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Transport Systems ◽  
Outcome Variable ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Factors Associated ◽  
The Past

Abstract Background In March 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic. Many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Uganda inclusive, implemented lockdowns, curfew, banning of both private and public transport systems, and mass gatherings to minimize spread. Social control measures for COVID-19 are reported to increase violence and discrimination globally, including in Uganda as some may be difficult to implement resulting in the heavy deployment of law enforcement. Media reports indicated that cases of violence and discrimination had increased in Uganda’s communities following the lockdown. We estimated the incidence and factors associated with experiencing violence and discrimination among Ugandans during the COVID-19 lockdown to inform control and prevention measures. Methods In April 2020, we conducted a secondary analysis of cross-sectional data under the International Citizen Project (ICP) to assess adherence to public health measures and their impact on the COVID-19 outbreak in Uganda. We analyzed data on violence and discrimination from the ICP study. We performed descriptive statistics for all the participants’ characteristics and created a binary outcome variable called experiencing violence and/or discrimination. We performed logistic regression analysis to identify the factors associated with experiencing violence and discrimination. Results Of the 1726 ICP study participants, 1051 (58.8%) were males, 841 (48.7%) were currently living with a spouse or partner, and 376 (21.8%) had physically attended work for more than 3 days in the past week. Overall, 145 (8.4%) experienced any form of violence and/or discrimination by any perpetrator, and 46 (31.7%) of the 145 reported that it was perpetrated by a law enforcement officer. Factors associated with experiencing violence or discrimination were: being male (AOR = 1.60 CI:1.10–2.33), having attended work physically for more than 3 days in the past week (AOR = 1.52 CI:1.03–2.23), and inability to access social or essential health services since the epidemic started (AOR = 3.10 CI:2.14–4.50). Conclusion A substantial proportion of Ugandan residents experienced violence and/or discrimination during the COVID-19 lockdown, mostly perpetrated by law enforcement officers. We recommend mitigation of the collateral impact of lockdowns with interventions that focus on improving policing quality, ensuring continuity of essential services, and strengthening support systems for vulnerable groups including males.

Kesehatan Mental Mahasiswa Fakultas Kedokteran Di Masa Pandemi COVID-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 113-120
Author(s):  
Athaya Taufiqy
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Medical Students ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
World Health ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Learning Material ◽  
Learning Programs ◽  
Learning Platforms ◽  
Health Organization

December 2019, COVID-19 was first reported in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China. March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a worldwide pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has focused attention on the mental health of the various affected populations, medical students being one of the more vulnerable groups. Therefore, this literature review aims to find out how the mental health of Faculty of Medicine students during the COVID-19 pandemic, so that it can be used as learning material to always maintain mental health stability. The method used in this study is a literature review and literature search which was carried out by collecting several electronic journals such as PubMed, NCBI and Google Scholar. Conducted by reviewing journals related to the mental health of medical faculty students during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study involved 49 library sources from 2018-2020. From 7,143 students, 0.9% of them experienced severe anxiety, 2.7% moderate, and 21.3% experienced mild anxiety. In addition, delay in academic activities is a risk factor for experiencing symptoms of anxiety. 40% of students also experience financial difficulties, in terms of e-learning platforms, this problem is a challenge for medical students because financial and social factors can be an obstacle to the development and implementation of effective online learning programs. Future research is urgently needed to provide a better explanation of the tips needed for students in adapting to the changes that occur in order to lead a mentally healthy life in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

scholarly journals Coronavirus Pandemic: Coping with the Psychological Outcomes, Mental Changes, and the “New Normal” During and After COVID-19

2020 ◽  
pp. 07-19
Author(s):  
Hiba Takieddine ◽  
Samaa AL Tabbah
Keyword(s):  
Healthcare Providers ◽  
Well Being ◽  
World Health ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Public Health Response ◽  
New Normal ◽  
The World ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
The Impact

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a highly infectious disease that has rapidly swept across the world, inducing a considerable degree of fear, worry and concern in the population at large and among certain groups in particular, such as older adults, healthcare providers and people with underlying health conditions. Authorities around the world tried to prevent the virus spread by imposing social distancing measures, quarantining citizens and isolating infected persons. Apart from its physical impact, COVID-19 pandemic has brought numerous changes to people’s lives. It changed daily routines, caused worldwide economic crisis, increased unemployment, and placed people under emotional and financial pressures. It affected people psychologically and mentally especially in terms of emotions and cognition. During the acute crisis, everyone to varying degrees experienced fear of infection, somatic concerns, worries about the pandemic’s consequences, loneliness, depression, stress, as well as increased alcohol and drug use. As part of its public health response, the World Health Organization (WHO) has worked with partners to develop a set of new guidelines and messages that can be used to prevent, manage, and support mental and psychological well-being in different vulnerable target groups during the outbreak. Whether people like it or not, the psychological sequela of this pandemic will emerge and persist for months and years to come leading to long-term consequences. New lifestyles and “New Normals” will surely emerge. The main purpose of this review is to summarize the impact of coronavirus pandemic on the psychological and mental health of people around the world especially vulnerable groups. It also presents the relevant intervention actions and recommendations to cope efficiently and effectively with the psychological short-term and long-term outcomes, mental changes, and the “New Normal” during and after COVID-19. Keywords: COVID-19; Coronavirus, Psychological; Mental; New Normal

scholarly journals Co-exploring the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on the livelihood of persons with disabilities in Bangladesh

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adity Shayontony Das ◽  
Fatema Akter Bonny ◽  
Arifa Bente Mohosin ◽  
Sabina Faiz Rashid ◽  
Md Tanvir Hasan
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
World Health ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Formal Sector ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Persons With Disabilities ◽  
Household Level ◽  
The Government ◽  
Health Organization

Background: According to World Health Organization (WHO), vulnerable groups such as persons with disabilities are facing severe impacts of the pandemic. There has always been significant challenges and hurdles in terms of achieving adequate and equitable inclusivity of persons with disabilities in all sections of social life. Education and employment of persons with disabilities were least focused which created more marginalization for the community. The long term impact of these marginalization has also led to the lack of jobs and social security of persons with disabilities, which is very clear now given the crisis in place. In low and middle income countries like Bangladesh the situation is even worse. To better understand the conditions of persons with disabilities in this crisis situation, the present study was initiated to explore the dimensions of livelihood with respect to income and wellbeing of persons with disabilities and to generate evidence for developing policies around these issues.Methods: A qualitative study was undertaken among 30 persons with disabilities from 8 different geographical divisions of Bangladesh. The interviews were conducted through telephone calls due to the existing COVID-19 crisis and mobility restrictions. The respondents were purposively selected based on gender, type of disability, area of resident (urban, rural) and their ability to communicate, therefore most (25/30) respondents were persons with physical disability. Thematic analysis was conducted to generate the findings of the study.Findings: Study findings revealed that majority of the respondents were involved in informal jobs. Predominantly males were daily wage-earners and often the sole breadwinner of the families, very few females were involved in economic activities. Since they had no stable income, the economic shock from the COVID-19 pandemic had affected them badly even leading to household level famine. The study identifies low level of education and informal job security as the primary causes of socio-economic insecurity among persons with disabilities, resulting in challenges in ensuring a stable livelihood during crisis situations, such as COVID-19.Conclusion: Constant alienation of persons of disabilities from the formal sector results in the deterioration of their livelihood standards which even worsen during any emergency crisis such as COVID-19. The study pinpoints that only aided services are not adequate to ensure persons with disabilities' rights rather there is an urgent need of disability inclusion in formal job sector and livelihood training for persons with disabilities. To achieve the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 and to irradiate the inequality towards persons with disabilities in the society it is important for the Government and concern bodies to focus on the inclusiveness with better implementation and monitoring strategies.

scholarly journals Epidemiology and Trend of Head and Neck Cancers in Iran

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maryam Mirzaei ◽  
Seyedeh Akram Hosseini ◽  
Mahshid Ghoncheh ◽  
Fahimeh Soheilipour ◽  
Shahin Soltani ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Head And Neck ◽  
Incidence Rate ◽  
Linear Trend ◽  
Health Planning ◽  
Head And Neck Cancers ◽  
World Health ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Standard Population ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Increasing Trends

<p><strong>INTRODUCTION:</strong> Head and neck cancers are the sixth common cancer worldwide. It is necessary to inform the trend of incidence for health planning. This study aimed to investigate the trend of head and neck cancers in Iran.</p> <p><strong>METHODS:</strong> This study was carried out based on national report on cancer registry in Iran. The crude incidence rate was calculated as per 100,000 people, and Age Standardized incidence Rate (ASR) was estimated using direct standardization and the standard population of World Health Organization (W.H.O). Data was analyzed using the Cochran - Armitage test for linear trend and software of WinPepi 2.1.</p> <p><strong>RESULTS:</strong> A total of 25,952 cases of cancers of the head and neck have been registered between 2003 and 2009. The age-standardized incidence rate reached from 4.8 cases per 100,000 in 2003 to 8.5 and 7.4 in 2008 and 2009, respectively, which revealed significantly increasing trends.</p> <p><strong>CONCLUSIONS: </strong>According to increasing trend age-standardized rate of head and neck cancer in Iran, it is recommended to identify risk factors and vulnerable groups in order to reduce the burden of this type of cancers.</p>

scholarly journals Automatic Construction of a Depression-Domain Lexicon Based on Microblogs: Text Mining Study

10.2196/17650 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. e17650
Author(s):  
Genghao Li ◽  
Bing Li ◽  
Langlin Huang ◽  
Sibing Hou
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Networking Sites ◽  
Label Propagation ◽  
World Health ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Depression Detection ◽  
Text Information ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Future Work

Background According to a World Health Organization report in 2017, there was almost one patient with depression among every 20 people in China. However, the diagnosis of depression is usually difficult in terms of clinical detection owing to slow observation, high cost, and patient resistance. Meanwhile, with the rapid emergence of social networking sites, people tend to share their daily life and disclose inner feelings online frequently, making it possible to effectively identify mental conditions using the rich text information. There are many achievements regarding an English web-based corpus, but for research in China so far, the extraction of language features from web-related depression signals is still in a relatively primary stage. Objective The purpose of this study was to propose an effective approach for constructing a depression-domain lexicon. This lexicon will contain language features that could help identify social media users who potentially have depression. Our study also compared the performance of detection with and without our lexicon. Methods We autoconstructed a depression-domain lexicon using Word2Vec, a semantic relationship graph, and the label propagation algorithm. These two methods combined performed well in a specific corpus during construction. The lexicon was obtained based on 111,052 Weibo microblogs from 1868 users who were depressed or nondepressed. During depression detection, we considered six features, and we used five classification methods to test the detection performance. Results The experiment results showed that in terms of the F1 value, our autoconstruction method performed 1% to 6% better than baseline approaches and was more effective and steadier. When applied to detection models like logistic regression and support vector machine, our lexicon helped the models outperform by 2% to 9% and was able to improve the final accuracy of potential depression detection. Conclusions Our depression-domain lexicon was proven to be a meaningful input for classification algorithms, providing linguistic insights on the depressive status of test subjects. We believe that this lexicon will enhance early depression detection in people on social media. Future work will need to be carried out on a larger corpus and with more complex methods.

scholarly journals Migration in times of pandemic: SARS-CoV-2 infection among the Warao indigenous refugees in Belém, Pará, Amazonia, Brazil

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilton Pereira da Silva ◽  
Isabella Nogueira Abreu ◽  
Carlos Neandro Cordeiro Lima ◽  
Aline Cecy Rocha de Lima ◽  
Alexandre do Nascimento Barbosa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
World Health ◽  
Epidemiological Surveillance ◽  
Vulnerable Groups ◽  
Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay ◽  
Igg Antibodies ◽  
High Exposure ◽  
Unified Health System ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
The City

Abstract Background The emergence of the new causative agent of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in the city of Wuhan, China, in December 2019, and its spread worldwide, led the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a pandemic. The disease has caused high mortality among traditional populations and the most socially vulnerable groups such indigenous and refugees. The present study aims to investigate the prevalence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies in the population of Venezuelan indigenous Warao refugees residing in private and public shelters in the city of Belem, capital of Para State, in the Brazilian Amazon. Methods One hundred one individuals of both sexes (43 men and 58 women) with ages varying from 18 to 77 years (average of 36 years) were investigated. Whole blood samples were collected and subsequently separated into plasma and leukocytes. Serological analysis was performed using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay - ELISA (Anti-SARS-COV-2 S1 IgG, EUROIMMUN, USA). Results The results indicate a positive serum prevalence of 83.2% (84), of which 77.6% (45/58) were females and 90.7% (39/43) were males. An indeterminate profile was observed in 6.9% (7), where it was not possible to confirm the presence of antibodies, and 9.9% (10) individuals were negative for IgG antibodies. Conclusions The finding of the high seroprevalence of IgG anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies reveals a high exposure of the Warao population in Belem to infection with the new coronavirus. These results underscore the importance of maintaining epidemiological surveillance with testing in traditional populations due to the high possibility of spreading the virus, especially among the most socioeconomically vulnerable groups, which depend exclusively on the Unified Health System (SUS), such as refugees and indigenous people.

scholarly journals Automatic Construction of a Depression-Domain Lexicon Based on Microblogs: Text Mining Study (Preprint)

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Genghao Li ◽  
Bing Li ◽  
Langlin Huang ◽  
Sibing Hou
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Networking Sites ◽  
Label Propagation ◽  
World Health ◽  
Support Vector ◽  
Depression Detection ◽  
Text Information ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Health Organization ◽  
Future Work

BACKGROUND According to a World Health Organization report in 2017, there was almost one patient with depression among every 20 people in China. However, the diagnosis of depression is usually difficult in terms of clinical detection owing to slow observation, high cost, and patient resistance. Meanwhile, with the rapid emergence of social networking sites, people tend to share their daily life and disclose inner feelings online frequently, making it possible to effectively identify mental conditions using the rich text information. There are many achievements regarding an English web-based corpus, but for research in China so far, the extraction of language features from web-related depression signals is still in a relatively primary stage. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to propose an effective approach for constructing a depression-domain lexicon. This lexicon will contain language features that could help identify social media users who potentially have depression. Our study also compared the performance of detection with and without our lexicon. METHODS We autoconstructed a depression-domain lexicon using Word2Vec, a semantic relationship graph, and the label propagation algorithm. These two methods combined performed well in a specific corpus during construction. The lexicon was obtained based on 111,052 Weibo microblogs from 1868 users who were depressed or nondepressed. During depression detection, we considered six features, and we used five classification methods to test the detection performance. RESULTS The experiment results showed that in terms of the F1 value, our autoconstruction method performed 1% to 6% better than baseline approaches and was more effective and steadier. When applied to detection models like logistic regression and support vector machine, our lexicon helped the models outperform by 2% to 9% and was able to improve the final accuracy of potential depression detection. CONCLUSIONS Our depression-domain lexicon was proven to be a meaningful input for classification algorithms, providing linguistic insights on the depressive status of test subjects. We believe that this lexicon will enhance early depression detection in people on social media. Future work will need to be carried out on a larger corpus and with more complex methods.

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