Using machine learning to track the pandemic’s impact on mental health

Researchers used machine learning to analyze the text of hundreds of thousands of Reddit posts, revealing several key impacts on mental health, including an overall increase in anxiety and in thoughts about suicide.

Dealing with a global pandemic has taken a toll on the mental health of millions of people. A team of MIT and Harvard University researchers has shown that they can measure those effects by analyzing the language that people use to express their anxiety online.

Using machine learning to analyze the text of more than 800,000 Reddit posts, the researchers were...