Abstract
Severe stress and depression constitute serious challenges to people in both personal and public health. Numerous university students suffer from depression each year while only fractions of them receive proper and competent treatments. Following the trends of the era, social media has been prevalent among university students and include disclosed depression references. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of various stressors and the “Big Five” personality traits towards the intention of disclosing depression. Addition to the disclosure intention, this study will also explore if the respondents have presented their depression via social media profiles. In this study, 200 WeChat users will be surveyed on their experiences from stress factors under four categories – academy, relationship, personal hassle and practical issues. Apart from the main study, some post hoc findings have been found and will be discussed and analyzed, including the differences of participants’ behaviors of group by gender, year of study and frequency of posts. Our theoretical model builds on Francisco, Arce, Vilchez and Vales’s theoretical model (2016), which indicates that stress leads to some chronic and acute situations and events which have negative influence on individual’s feelings and moods.
Recommended Citation
Li, Mandy; Zou, Maria; and Cho, Vincent, "[EXTENDED] A Study about Depression Identification via Social Media" (2019). AMCIS 2019 Proceedings. 67.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2019/treo/treos/67
[EXTENDED] A Study about Depression Identification via Social Media
Severe stress and depression constitute serious challenges to people in both personal and public health. Numerous university students suffer from depression each year while only fractions of them receive proper and competent treatments. Following the trends of the era, social media has been prevalent among university students and include disclosed depression references. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of various stressors and the “Big Five” personality traits towards the intention of disclosing depression. Addition to the disclosure intention, this study will also explore if the respondents have presented their depression via social media profiles. In this study, 200 WeChat users will be surveyed on their experiences from stress factors under four categories – academy, relationship, personal hassle and practical issues. Apart from the main study, some post hoc findings have been found and will be discussed and analyzed, including the differences of participants’ behaviors of group by gender, year of study and frequency of posts. Our theoretical model builds on Francisco, Arce, Vilchez and Vales’s theoretical model (2016), which indicates that stress leads to some chronic and acute situations and events which have negative influence on individual’s feelings and moods.