The University of Jaén develops tools to detect mental health problems in social networks

by time news

The Jaen University (UJA) directs a project of artificial intelligence that combines language technologies with psychology in order to develop tools capable of early detection mental health problemsl of adolescents in social networks.

The Big Hug project, in which more than a hundred young people between the ages of 12 and 18 participate, is led by Arturo Montejo Ráez, from the Computer Science Department of the UJA and a member of the Intelligent Access Systems research group to Information (SINAI) of the University of Jaén.

The strategy used to establish the early detection of a certain disorder It is called “supervised learning” and consists of equipping computers with the ability to discriminate and identify patterns, on the communications of people already diagnosed, that allow, from various messages, to launch an alert signal.

Once the algorithms have been evaluated, the UJA team plans a second part of the project that consists of the ability to design and develop a technology with which to help young people and their families more and better.

In this second phase, the research projects the creation of applications capable of identify risk situations before they pose a serious threat.

The applications used range from the installation of parental supervision tools on young people’s devices, always with their knowledge, to the use of “bots” or conversational agents (virtual assistants). able to empathize and collect clues about the state of mental health of the user.

After announcing that the next step would be to make this technological transfer to society effective, Professor Montejo Ráez has concluded: “not only can we develop algorithms and make them work on the computer, but we also have to find a feasible application so that these parents or young people can activate mechanisms for self-assessment”.

This work, financed by the Andalusian Plan for Research, Development and Innovation of the Junta de Andalucía (PAIDI-2020), is based on different studies that confirm the harmful effects of social networks among the younger population, such as anxiety disorders, depression, suicidal ideation, cyberbullying, gambling addiction, or eating disorders.

“During the pandemic we have come to double the time we spend on social media, exceeding the limit recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) and after the pandemic, suicide is already the first cause of death among young people, specifically, between 15 and 29 years old. In Spain there are ten suicides a day, that is to say, twice as many people die by suicide than by traffic accidents”, points out the coordinator of this project.

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