Temporal Arcs of Mental Health: Patterns Behind Changes in Depression over Time

In this paper, the authors draw inspiration from work on the emotional arcs of stories to uncover the patterns that individual users follow on the social media platform Reddit. The arcs uncovered demonstrate interesting patterns that individual users follow beyond the patterns represented by the mean behavior among all users. Furthermore, the shapes of these arcs are consistent for both community and language-based metrics. Depression has been shown to follow seasonal patterns, with more episodes in the winter. By grouping users by their temporal arcs across a year, the authors identify four dominant arcs that can be connected to varied changes in depression throughout the year. (Published Abstract Provided)