Evidence map›Paper›PMID 33739296›Full record

ArticleJMIR mental health2021

Understanding Side Effects of Antidepressants: Large-scale Longitudinal Study on Social Media Data.

Koustuv Saha, John Torous, Emre Kiciman, Munmun De Choudhury

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in JMIR mental health, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
23citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

23 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

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  9. Antidepressant Potential of Hispidulin Present inCentral nervous system agents in medicinal chemistry · 2025
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4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Koustuv SahaGeorgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, United States.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8872-2934
John TorousDepartment of Psychiatry, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5362-7937
Emre KicimanMicrosoft Research, Redmond, WA, United States.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5429-468X
Munmun De ChoudhuryGeorgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, United States.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8939-264X

Funding

Leveraging Social Media Data and Machine Learning to Optimize Treatment Paradigms for Youth with SchizophreniaR01MH117172 · NIMH · GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY · PI DE CHOUDHURY, MUNMUN · 2019 to 2022
$2.6M
NIMH NIH HHS R01 MH117172
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundAntidepressants are known to show heterogeneous effects across individuals and conditions, posing challenges to understanding their efficacy in mental health treatment. Social media platforms enable individuals to share their day-to-day concerns with others and thereby can function as unobtrusive, large-scale, and naturalistic data sources to study the longitudinal behavior of individuals taking antidepressants.

objectiveWe aim to understand the side effects of antidepressants from naturalistic expressions of individuals on social media.

methodsOn a large-scale Twitter data set of individuals who self-reported using antidepressants, a quasi-experimental study using unsupervised language analysis was conducted to extract keywords that distinguish individuals who improved and who did not improve following the use of antidepressants. The net data set consists of over 8 million Twitter posts made by over 300,000 users in a 4-year period between January 1, 2014, and February 15, 2018.

resultsFive major side effects of antidepressants were studied: sleep, weight, eating, pain, and sexual issues. Social media language revealed keywords related to these side effects. In particular, antidepressants were found to show a spectrum of effects from decrease to increase in each of these side effects.

conclusionsThis work enhances the understanding of the side effects of antidepressants by identifying distinct linguistic markers in the longitudinal social media data of individuals showing the most and least improvement following the self-reported intake of antidepressants. One implication of this work concerns the potential of social media data as an effective means to support digital pharmacovigilance and digital therapeutics. These results can inform clinicians in tailoring their discussion and assessment of side effects and inform patients about what to potentially expect and what may or may not be within the realm of normal aftereffects of antidepressants.

Indexed as

antidepressantsdigital healthdigital pharmacovigilancelinguistic markersmental healthside effectssocial mediasymptoms

Identifiers

PMID33739296
PMCPMC8077932

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.