Assessment Of Depression And Anxiety In Young And Old With A Question-based Computational Language Approach

This article examines the differences in how middle aged and younger adults describe their mental health using open-ended questions and rating scales. Results demonstrate that middle aged adults describe their mental health differently compared to younger adults, with middle aged adults emphasising depression and loneliness whereas young adults list anxiety and financial concerns. Natural language processing (NLP) combined with machine learning methods may provide new opportunities to identify, model, and describe mental health in middle aged and younger adults. These semantic measures may provide ecological validity and aid the assessment of mental health.