Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Chen, Xiangyong, Lin, Xiaochuan
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.14671
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1866916656636231680
author Chen, Xiangyong
Lin, Xiaochuan
author_facet Chen, Xiangyong
Lin, Xiaochuan
contents Early detection of depression from social media data offers a valuable opportunity for timely intervention. However, this task poses significant challenges, requiring both professional medical knowledge and the development of accurate and explainable models. In this paper, we propose LLM-MTD (Large Language Model for Multi-Task Depression Detection), a novel approach that leverages a pre-trained large language model to simultaneously classify social media posts for depression and generate textual explanations grounded in medical diagnostic criteria. We train our model using a multi-task learning framework with a combined loss function that optimizes both classification accuracy and explanation quality. We evaluate LLM-MTD on the benchmark Reddit Self-Reported Depression Dataset (RSDD) and compare its performance against several competitive baseline methods, including traditional machine learning and fine-tuned BERT. Our experimental results demonstrate that LLM-MTD achieves state-of-the-art performance in depression detection, showing significant improvements in AUPRC and other key metrics. Furthermore, human evaluation of the generated explanations reveals their relevance, completeness, and medical accuracy, highlighting the enhanced interpretability of our approach. This work contributes a novel methodology for depression detection that combines the power of large language models with the crucial aspect of explainability.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_14671
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Generating Medically-Informed Explanations for Depression Detection using LLMs
Chen, Xiangyong
Lin, Xiaochuan
Computation and Language
Early detection of depression from social media data offers a valuable opportunity for timely intervention. However, this task poses significant challenges, requiring both professional medical knowledge and the development of accurate and explainable models. In this paper, we propose LLM-MTD (Large Language Model for Multi-Task Depression Detection), a novel approach that leverages a pre-trained large language model to simultaneously classify social media posts for depression and generate textual explanations grounded in medical diagnostic criteria. We train our model using a multi-task learning framework with a combined loss function that optimizes both classification accuracy and explanation quality. We evaluate LLM-MTD on the benchmark Reddit Self-Reported Depression Dataset (RSDD) and compare its performance against several competitive baseline methods, including traditional machine learning and fine-tuned BERT. Our experimental results demonstrate that LLM-MTD achieves state-of-the-art performance in depression detection, showing significant improvements in AUPRC and other key metrics. Furthermore, human evaluation of the generated explanations reveals their relevance, completeness, and medical accuracy, highlighting the enhanced interpretability of our approach. This work contributes a novel methodology for depression detection that combines the power of large language models with the crucial aspect of explainability.
title Generating Medically-Informed Explanations for Depression Detection using LLMs
topic Computation and Language
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.14671