Learning from Twitter Veterans with PTSD Tweets

One more thing worth thinking about when you read this article about a study on PTSD and tweets is the US military has been cutting troops, leaving them unemployed. That isn't the worst. They lost a part of who they are on top of that.

For far too many, this is all they ever wanted to do with their lives. It was part of who they are. Far more attached to their jobs than anyone else, these career choices came with being ready to die on the job. Military life is part of their identity.

Tracking traces of depression and PTSD in tweets
Beta Boston
Nidhi Subbaraman
7 DAYS AGO

Losing a job can take a toll on mental health. That’s a case that’s been made time and again.

For the first time, researchers are showing that this relationship can be seen in the geo-tagged tweets sent by Americans across the country.

At the Joint Statistical Meeting held in Boston last week, researchers from the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center and Johns Hopkins University presented early evidence that counties in the U.S. with higher rates of unemployment also had a higher proportion of Twitter users with depression-signifying language in their tweets.

That isn’t all. In counties with high populations of veterans, more Twitter users showed traces of post-traumatic stress disorder in their public posts. Counties with a lower median household income had a higher proportion of people who had tweets with signs of depression.
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Linked from
Twitter opens a window on depression and PTSD Boston Globe AUGUST 19, 2014