Abstract

The proposed causal ensemble CNN framework can help predict mental health through social
network analysis, which is a novel methodology in this field. This study addresses the
considerable limitations in existing approaches to understanding social network data, and how
one might infer causality from such a dataset; as well as an urgent need for improved culturally
sensitive mental health detection technologies that are lower risk, ethically sound. This
framework uses casual inference to provide integration of multiple Convolutional Neural
Networks (CNN) for improving prediction accuracy and robustness in mental health —
depression mainly. This research will aim to provide nuance about how online behavior affects
mental health outcomes, employing data from across social media platforms and in different
cultural contexts. Methods: The study lays it out in four main steps — do the preparation of data
from ubiquitous UCI datasets, construction unsolvable causal models for social networks
interaction; amalgamate several CNN algorithms based on optimization and clarifies extensively
model performance. The approach aims to remedy specifies with respect to confounders and
measurement error in the current assumptions of social network dynamics. Desired results –
Results will have correct deep-ent for learning model that can identify causal inferences or
mechanism around act of mental health on SN; Using the fields of Social network analysis and
causal inference, this study is to generate evidence for future predictive intervention
interventions targeting behaviors or actions with higher readmission prediction accuracies. If
cultural sensitivity and complexity are involved in the causal structure of social networks, we
suggest that this work could lay and expand a foundation to design more accurate global ethical
mental health forecasting as well as interventions.

INTRODUCTION

Research Background

A worldwide almost universal disorder with millions of people it affects and have important
consequences on individuals as well as the society overall. Early detection and intervention are
essential for targeted care as well as optimized outcomes. Social media has been a common place
in which investigators can look for trends among behaviors that may be characteristic of
depressive symptoms (De Choudhury, Counts et al. 2013). Texts, images and user interactions in
social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter could serve to early prediction of depression
(Shen et al., 2017).

With remarkable achievements in fields including Image recognition and Natural Language
Processing, Convolutional Neural Networks have demonstrated incredible outcomes. For
example, CNNs could have been used to analyze occurrences of mental illnesses in social media
data by monitoring factors such as back channeling and topic shifts. However, in many cases, the
relationship between the online behavior on popular SNS sites or Twitter among others, and
depression, which is later linked to the data, might not be the same, and as a result, the pattern
analysis shown by the models may not be generalizable and interpretable. According to Zhou,
ensemble learning methods can improve the stability and accuracy and generalization of machine
learning models. Ensemble methods integrate aspects of different models to eliminate the
learning weaknesses and can capture amazing patterns related to the problems. In depression
detection, for example, ensemble approaches have shown some promise in terms of integration
of various features and classifiers (Trotzek et al., 2018).

This study indicates the design of a novel causal ensemble CNN technique for predicting early
signs of depression, in overall behavioral patterns on social media. In the following section, we
provide a simple approach to introducing causal inference into our ensemble of CNNs thereby
making it more predictable as well as interpretable. As a result, this approach will not only
expose potential phenotypes of depression but also support us to find association low or high
typical social media behaviors with the risk and severity in depressive symptoms.

Introduction

The problem of global mental health disorders is HUGE — colossal and problematic, still
expanding. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines major depressive disorder as the
leading cause of disability globally, affecting 280 million individuals. Untreated depression may
“result in serious personal consequences to the individual's family life, social networks and
career resulting often tragically in suicide etc.” (Hawton & van Heeringen, 2009). According to
the National Institute of Mental Health (2023), “Given these potential negative consequences,
early detection and intervention are essential in effectively treating schizophrenia and improving
patient outcomes.

Standard methods to screen for depression, such as patient-self report questionnaires or clinical
interviews. Those approaches, nevertheless, remain subjective and are both subject to bias and
time-intensive (e.g., Zimmerman et al. 2005). Moreover, they are generally delivered after severe
symptoms have developed and do not reach those most in need with timely intervention (Kessler
et al., 2005). This opens an immediate demand to heighten efforts on novel strategies for early
detection and diagnosis of depression.

The proliferation of social media platforms has heralded in an age defined by 'a new kind of
data', unprecedented access which allows insight into the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of
every day people (Boyd & Ellison 2007:11). These platforms are rich in data ranging from text,
photos and videos to social interactions that can be used as proxy signals for the prevalence or
early signs of mental illness (De Choudhury 2013). Researchers have increasingly used social
media-based data to estimate mental health issues (Coppersmith et al., 2014; Guntuku et al.,
2017).

Nonetheless, existing computational approaches studying depression detection in social media

primarily rely on developing machine learning models to discover associations between
depressive symptoms and online behaviors rather than discovering causative links (Orabi et al.,
2018; Shen et al., 2021). Lack of such a limit inhibits the development of optimal early detection
and intervention tactics. Therefore, understanding the causal mechanisms of associations
between these variables is crucial to develop more specific intervention directed towards
addressing root causes and not only its consequences.

This study is making an effort to present new way of using social media sites in the unlimited
environment as a tool for early prediction and detection of depression. The framework is
constructed to introduce multiple parallel trained convolutional neural networks based on
different social media data including text, image and network interaction. Indeed, CNNs have
proven extremely effective to identify complex patterns from data and they are suited for
analyzing different kinds of media contents commonly shared on social networks (LeCun et al.,
2015).

Moreover, this work blends techniques of causal inference into the deep learning framework that
explain how those particular online behaviors are caused by depressive symptoms. It aims goes
beyond identifying only spurious associations and attempts to identify markers of depression; not
just correlations (Shalizi & Thomas, 2011).

Moreover, this increases the accuracy and reliability of how accurately we diagnosed depression
through social media information. This research could enable us to catch individuals early at
higher risk of developing infections for earlier intervention: a few quarts being the difference
between life and death.

Problem Statement

Although more recent advances have occurred in machine learning and social media analytics,
detecting depression early based on behavior of individuals that they exhibit on platforms like
Facebook or Twitter is still a challenging task. In this regard:

1. Limited Causal Understanding:

Existing methods to detect depression from online data mostly utilize correlation, and do not
account for the underlying causality between depressive symptoms and observable social
signals (De Choudhury et al., 2013), thereby precluding better models for timely detection of
blogger's depressive state.

2. Poor Multimodal Data Fusion:

Common types of social data include, Texts Images User interactions In the meantime,
because multimodal sources of data can complement one another to make more accurate
predictions than either form of input alone for some phenomena (Larsen et al., 2017), models
which do not take benefit from all modality types may miss important signs and symptoms in
 common across modalities through which we might better understand if or how a given
person needs help.

3. Inefficient Ensemble approaches:

While ensemble techniques like stacking have been useful to boost the ability of model
performance, there is a demand for advanced stack methods that can combine multiple CNN
models efficiently and with cause structure (Trotzek et al., 2018).

4. Generalize too little:

Almost all existing depression detection models do not scale well across different social
media platforms or their user populations. This only becomes more complicated when we
take models trained on one platform or demographic group and apply it to others (Orabi et al.
2018).

5. Need for Transparent Artificial Intelligence in Mental Health Applications:

The non-transparent, interpretable deep learning models in mental health applications have a
problematic complexity. Thus, there is an urgent need for explainable AI techniques to shed light
on the decision-making process of such systems, especially within sensitive areas like depression
detection (Benton et al., 2017).

Research hypothesis

This research hypothesizes that:

i. A causal ensemble CNN framework can effectively identify causal relationships
between specific social media behaviors and depressive symptoms.

ii. This framework will outperform existing methods for early depression detection
based on social media data in terms of accuracy and reliability.
Research Questions

This research aims to address the following questions:

i. Which specific social media behaviors are causally linked to depressive symptoms?

ii. How can causal inference techniques be effectively integrated with ensemble CNNs for
depression detection?

iii. What type of social media data (or combination) is going to provide the best information?
iv. What are the results compared to existing methods in accuracy, precision, recall and F1-
score with this new framework?

Research objectives

The objectives of this research are to:

i. Create a new Causal ensemble CNN model for early detection of depression from social
media data
ii. Determine the direction of causality between certain online behaviors and depressive
symptoms
iii. Compare the performance of proposed framework with existing methods using standard
evaluation metrics
 LITERATURE REVIEW

Introduction

In order to put the proposed causal ensemble CNN framework within context, this review paper
will first highlight how common and lethal depression is, as well as examine using social media
data for early alerting. It also investigates existing depression detection through behavior analysis
in social media by employing some of state-of-the-art machine learning and deep learnings
methodologies.
These studies used conventional machine learning frameworks to mine and classification
different features extracted from social media data. These strategies were usually implemented
through hand-crafting features, and used methods such as support vector machines (SVMs),
random forests and logistic regression (De Choudhury et al., 2013). Although these methods
showed potential, they lacked capability to perceive intricate nature of unordered social media
data.
Recently, deep learning software is used in some researches to automatically acquire the
extremely important features from context provided on social media through images and text
(Orabi et al., 2018). The performance of these strategies was much better in identifying likely
depression indicators across different social media platforms.
Yet, most prior methods afford only associations rather than the causal connections between
social media uses and depressive symptoms. As a result, this challenge has given rise to the call
for incorporating causal inference methods into depression detection models (Shen et al., 2017).
In addition, ensemble learning methods have been popular in this area to improve the robustness
and accuracy for tasks of depression detection (Trotzek et al., 2018). However, despite having
achieved all these milestones, there is still need for more complex ensemble techniques that can
effectively blend causal inference with deep learning models.
In this literature review, we will critically examine them showing their strengths and weaknesses
as well as pinpointing the research gap addressed by our proposed casual ensemble CNN
framework.
Empirical Literature

An early depression detection study using social media as the stage for in-depth exploration of
Neuro-Symbolic AI was carried out by Dou Rongyu (2024). The study, Research on Early
Detection of Depression Based on Neuro-Symbolic AI Approach via Social Media Analysis,
details the TAM-SenticNet model -- a network that blends neural and symbolic reasoning to
improve depression detection. The system combines emotion analysis (SenticNet library) with
temporal emotional data processing, using TAM network as the heart of this combination.
The empirical findings of the study indicate that TAM-SenticNet outperforms traditional
machine learning and deep learning models in terms of precision and interpretability. However,
the study's focus on symbolic reasoning and the reliance on specific datasets may limit its
generalizability. Nonetheless, this research represents a significant advancement in applying AI
to mental health, particularly in automating and improving the early detection of depression
through social media analysis.
Choi and Yang (2024) conducted a study that introduced an innovative ensemble deep learning
model named LSTM-Attention-BiTCN for detecting suicide risk in social media posts. This
model combines Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) networks with a bidirectional Temporal
Convolutional Network (BiTCN) and a self-attention mechanism to accurately classify and
detect suicidal ideation from textual data on social media platforms like Reddit. The study
demonstrated the model's superior performance with an accuracy of 94.05%, a precision of
93.85%, a recall of 94.24%, and an F1-score of 94.05%. However, while the model showed
strong results, it was only tested on data from one social media platform, which might limit the
generalizability of the findings. Despite this, the research contributes significantly to the
development of more effective suicide prevention tools by utilizing advanced neural networks to
analyze and interpret social media data.
Carneiro de Melo et al. (2020) developed a novel approach for automatic depression detection
using facial dynamics, which represents a significant advancement in the field of affective
computing. Their work titled "A Deep Multiscale Spatiotemporal Network for Assessing
Depression from Facial Dynamics" introduces the Multiscale Spatiotemporal Network (MSN), a
3D convolutional neural network (CNN) designed to capture a wide range of spatio-temporal
variations in facial expressions. This method allows the model to more effectively represent
facial information related to depressive behaviors by incorporating different temporal depths and
spatial receptive fields. The study demonstrated that MSN outperformed state-of-the-art methods
in automatic depression recognition, making it a valuable tool for accurate assessment of
depression from video data. However, the study's reliance on video data might limit its
applicability in scenarios where such data is unavailable or where privacy concerns restrict its
use. Despite this limitation, the study opens up new possibilities for using deep learning models
in mental health diagnostics.
De Choudhury et al (2013). conducted one of the most innovative studies on inferring depression
from behavior in social media. The work Predicting Depression via Social Media (PDCM)
developed features extracted from Twitter data along behavioral, linguistic and
sociodemographic dimensions that are predictive of major depressive disorder (MD). This study
was relatively predictive of depression, forecasting the rates as much as 70%, which suggests
that social media platform has large avenues to screen your mental health. However, the study
only focused on users of one website (Twitter) and results may not be generalizable as it relied
on self-reported depression diagnoses. However, this experiment opened a way for additional
experiments within the scope of that area.
Building on the De Choudhury and also Expand this study along with others, Reece & Danforth
(2017) conducted a research titled "Instagram photos reveal predictive markers of depression" to
detect not just words in posts but images uploaded by users via Instagram. They used machine
learning approaches to analyze visual and metadata data of Instagram posts with a 70% accuracy
rate in predicting if someone has depression or not. Their application of methods for image
analysis also helped to expand the already text-based literature in detecting depression. While the
study suffered from a relatively small sample size (166 patients) and some potential source of
selection bias in patient recruitment, it does provide interesting preliminary insight.
Discussions Orabi et al. in their paper “Deep Learning for Depression Detection of Twitter
Users”. In 2018 (here) newer and more powerful deep learning techniques are introduced. A
multicentric deep learning system was synthesized by the authors19, which is presented here in
light of Orabi et al. 2018 paper, Deep Learning for Depression Detection on Twitter. That is,
they came up with a combination of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs ) and Long Short-
Term Memory (LSTM) networks that are able to process both textual features as well the user
behavioral aspects. Finally, they improved their F1-score to 0.84 which is better what the other
researchers accomplished. The strength of this study lies partly in feature extraction and model
architecture, etc. However, this research could also benefit from considering temporal patterns in
user behavior.
According to Trotzek et al. (2021), temporal dynamics are crucial features for the early detection
of depression papers from “Using Temporal Information in Social Media for Depression
Detection” They proposed a model integrating users’ linguistic transitions over time that has an
F1-score of 0.64 on a large scale dataset from Twitter in their work. Even though this study has
achieved a considerable improvement for temporality of depression occurrence, its use of only
written texts leads to pitfalls in performance.
To provide further elucidation of the relationship between depression and social media behavior,
Shen et al. (2019) used a causal framework in their work “Estimating Causal Effects of Social
Media Usage on Depression.” To measure the impact of social media use on depressive
symptoms, two approaches were used by the authors: propensity score matching and
instrumental variable analysis. Instead, they write the connection is unlikely stronger but it exists
to a degree high enough that excessive social media use can predict depression symptoms. While
this research has provided incredibly strong advances in understanding causality, its cross-
sectional nature prohibits concrete causal statements and calls for longitudinal studies going
forward.
Gui et al. Dos Santos Fuks et al. (2019) extended the multimodal approach introducing a new
technique in their work “Cooperative Multimodal Approach to Depression Detection in Twitter”.
A proposed plan designed to combine the text-based information of tweets with visual and social
aspects using cooperative learning framework. This model had F1-score of 0.87, thus
demonstrating that combining multiple modalities has a benefit for depression detection.
Fundamentally, this paper is strong in its use of many kinds of data. However the complexity of
my model still lead to questions about interpretation and utility.
Ricard et al. (2020) described the demand for models that are human interpretable and presented
an explainable AI model in their paper “Explainable AI for Depression Detection in Social
Media: A Hybrid Attention-Based Model”. To balance accuracy (85%) and interpretation, the
research team proposed a hybrid model integrating CNNs with an attention mechanism that
identified primary features contributing to depression detection. The particular strength of this
study lies in the balance between performance and interpretability. It cannot be used widely
across various online environments because of the use of one proprietary social media platform
(Twitter).
Li et al. Cross-Cultural Depression Detection on Social Media: A Multi-Lingual Ensemble
Approach (2020) First they developed language-specific features for the ensemble model that
include some of their previous cultural specific indicators in combination with universal
symptoms of depression. Their overall averaged F1-score of 0.82 across languages and cultures
demonstrated that expectations could be made with reasonable confidence on performance of
respective systems, thereby opening up opportunities for more globally convergent depression
detection system advancements. Though this study was very good at overcoming cultural
diversity, some errors should be assumed due to their machine translation approach on the non-
english contents.
Tadesse et al (2021). introduced such studies focused on the temporal dynamics of depression
and demonstrated a novel time-aware method in their article “Temporal Patterns Matter:
Detecting Depression in Social Media Using Long-Term Temporal Dynamics”. The researchers
presented a hierarchical attention network framework that accounted for both short-term
dynamics and long-term trends captured in users’ social media activity. Tadesse et al (2021).
obtained 89% accuracy, outperforming previous time-aware methods. In this case, the strength of
the article is the way of dealing with temporal data and information. However, this model can be
too complex and difficult to integrate into real-time systems.
Motivated by the necessity for causal interpretation, Shen et al. In their paper "Discovering
Causal Factors of Depression from Social Media: A Structural Causal Model Approach," Li et al
(2021). introduced a causal discovery framework. Using structural causal models, the researchers
identified possible causes of depression through social media use. Their method not only yielded
a strong prediction performance (F1-score of 0.86), but also delivered valuable insights about the
causal paths between different behavioral factors and depression outcomes in their experiments.
Although this study contributed meaningfully to causal modeling in depression detection, the
assumptions of structural causal models might constrain generalizability of these findings.
Recognizing the importance of privacy in mental health detection, Benton et al (2017). The
ethical considerations of in their paper titled “Ethical Implications of Using Social Media Data
for Depression Detection: A Privacy-Preserving Framework.” In fact, this paper proposed a
federated learning method for depression detection at scale using multiple data sources without
sharing raw user data. Although the accuracy of their model (F1 score = 0.79) was lower than
centralized approaches, it still illustrated that privacy-preserving depression detection is indeed
possible. It demonstrates the ethical as well as the practical implementation of privacy-
preserving techniques. While this highlights the inevitable privacy-performance trade-off
accompanying these competing priorities, it also underscores one of our biggest challenges we
must overcome to reach a viable and durable solution for addressing adversarial attacks —
achieving that balance.
In Sekulić et al work, they explored the possibility of transfer learning. Cross-Domain
Depression Detection via Harvesting Social Media (2018) introduced a novel method. Based on
this observation, the researchers proposed a transfer learning framework that transfers knowledge
from one source domain (Twitter) to another target domain with limited labeled data and
different characteristics. They achieved an F1-score of 0.83 on the target domain: illustrating
how transfer learning can help to alleviate data paucity problems as well as improve
generalization tendencies in a very light-weight model. Although this work had considerably
strengthened cross-platform generalization, the performance difference between source and
target domain means that in principle optimization about DA techniques can be further
improved.
Dealing with the issue of early detection, Jadhav et al. In their work, Panisson et al (2019). This
ensemble model that combines multiple machine learning models was used by the researchers to
predict depression before its clinical prevalence. In testing the emotional signals of depression,
their model reached an accuracy rate of 86%. The main strength of the study is that it addresses
early screening and prevention. Nevertheless, given the relatively small data set limited to a
single geographical region; there are questions regarding applicability of this model across wide
ranging populations.
Wang et al (2020). recognized this seemingly unstable nature of depression. This previous
temporal-aware research is a framework proposed by Wang et al (2020) “Dynamic Depression
Detection via Social Media: A Temporal Convolutional Network Approach.” Temporal
Convolutional Networks (TCNs) were used by the authors to model how depressive symptoms
evolve over time in social media posts. This model has an F1-score = 0.88 and performs better
than traditional RNN-based approaches. The superiority of this work is the controllable long-
term dependency convention. Nevertheless, its interpretability is somewhat reduced makes TCN
model less likely to be chosen in clinical practices whither explainable decisions are key.
In the aspect of research exploring the possibility of unsupervised learning, Chen et al. (2021)
introduced a new method in their work "Unsupervised Depression Detection from Social Media:
A Self-Supervised Learning Approach". In this work, the researchers propose a self-supervised
learning model which can capture meaningful representations of depression from social
multimodal time series data in an unlabeled sequence level using abundant volume of raw visual
and textual contents. Without the use of labeled data, their model showed competitive results
(F1-score 0.84), signing to a future perspective on using unsupervised methods to tackle both
privacy and data scarcity simultaneously. Although this study has advanced the field of
unsupervised depression detection to some extent, absence of micro clinical validation
scrutinizes its alignment with validated diagnostic criteria.
Guntuku et al. (2019) investigated the multimodal setting in their study: “Multimodal Depression
Detection on Social Media: A Comprehensive Analysis of Visual, Textual, and Social Signals”.
To do this, the researchers created a fusion model that integrates visual cues from posted images
and language context clues as well as social engagement signals. This yielded an F1-score of
0.89, showing the promise in combining heterogeneous data types to enhance depression
detection task performance. This study is a comprehensive social media analysis and its strength
lies in that factor. Nevertheless the computational cost to joint-process multiple data modalities
concurrently could limit real-time capabilities.
To tackle data imbalance issue, common in all mental health datasets, Cacheda et al. (2019) in
their work “Early Detection of Depression: Social Network Analysis and Random Forest
Techniques”, introduced a new sampling method to solve the imbalanced datasets problem. They
accomplished this combination by using social network analysis in conjunction with random
forest classifiers and advanced sampling techniques for imbalanced data. However, their method,
with an AUC of 0.89 to detect depression cases has more robustness due data imbalance than
other previous methods based in the same dataset. While helping correct a widespread
methodological shortcoming, reliance on conventional machine learning approaches could limit
this study towards the identification of subtle nonlinear relationships in social media data.
With this in mind and the fact that personalized medicine is continually mentioned, Nguyen et al.
(2020) in their paper “Personalized Depression Detection on Social Media: A Deep Learning
Approach with User-Level Embeddings” introduced a user-centric framework. They created a
hierarchical attention network with user-level embeddings to model personalized depotypes of
how depressiveness is manifest. Their model was able to reach an F1-score of 0.87, making a
strong case for the advantages that personalization might offer depression detection which is
unique about this study, however, it controlled for personality and other social media activities.
Nonetheless, the larger model size and concerns about user-specific modeling expandable to a
large scale could make broader deployment of such an approach more difficult.
Exploring the potential of graph-based approaches, Wu et al. (2020) proposed a novel framework
in their study "Graph Convolutional Networks for Depression Detection in Social Media: A User
Interaction Perspective." The researchers employed Graph Convolutional Networks (GCNs) to
model the complex interactions between users and their social networks. Their approach
achieved an accuracy of 88%, outperforming traditional CNN and RNN-based models. This
study's strength lies in its ability to capture the relational aspects of social media behavior.
However, the reliance on detailed user interaction data may limit its applicability in scenarios
where such information is not readily available.
Phrased as a response to the demand of interpretable causal models, Zhang et al. (2021) as
"Causal Discovery for Depression Detection on Social Media: A Structural Causal Model with
Attention Mechanism" introduced a causal inference framework. In order to identify the potential
causal factors of depression from social media, the researchers proposed a hybrid model that
combines structural causal modeling with attention neural networks. Not only did their method
result in a high accuracy (F1-score of 0.88), but also offer insights about the causal relations
between different behavioral variables and depression injury. Despite the advances of this study
in causal modeling for diagnosis of depression, and with some insights into implications from
structural cause-effect models (and connection to neural attention mechanisms), it remained
unclear regarding these useful methodologies if they must integrate together or face greater
challenge on clinical correlation and validation.
Gaps Identified
Following the literature review, certain weaknesses were identified, primarily centered on
methodology, data sources, cultural context, and ethical considerations. Particularly, the majority
of the reviewed literature focused on research from Western countries and large English-
speaking populations, revealing a significant gap in the exploration of depression detection
within diverse cultural contexts, especially in developing countries and non-English speaking
populations. The lack of cultural diversity is a significant challenge that emphasizes the need for
a focused investigation into the application of machine learning and deep learning techniques for
depression detection across various cultural expressions. Indeed, different cultures may present
with depression differently and use social media in other ways, so linguistic markers could
possibly be culture-specific. Finally, an overall limitation described in these studies is the
common use of social media data from just one platform and almost always coming only from
Twitter or Facebook. This has raised the question about how generalizable and representative on
those findings (Diverse individuals behave differently in their ways of expression among various
social media platform). Further, the lack of longitudinal studies handcuffs our ability to
temporally frame when we should expect social media behavior in relation to symptoms onset
and progression for depression. The limited emphasis on causal inference, privacy issues and link
to the clinical care also underscores important voids in current research. Addressing these gaps
involves conducting research that specifically considers cultural diversity, incorporates multi-
platform data, employs longitudinal designs, and prioritizes ethical considerations and clinical
relevance. By doing so, future studies can enhance the applicability, reliability, and ethical
implementation of early depression detection systems using social media behavior analysis,
ensuring that the outcomes are both generalizable and sensitive to diverse populations.

Justification for Feasibility

The proposed research has introduced an initial conceptual model of a causal ensemble CNN
framework for early depression detection from social media behavior analysis, which is not only
feasible but in many ways promising considering the shortcomings we identified in our literature
review. As previous studies have suggested shortcomings in the single one modality or
traditional machine learning for recognizing depression visualization across social behaviors, due
to complex and multifaceted ways of how depressive behavior may diverge. For addressing the
variations of depression detection across diverse populations and enhancing its accuracy, this
study is done by using sophisticated deep learning techniques such as Convolutional Neural
Networks (CNNs), integrated with causal modeling techniques, and ensemble learning
mechanisms. Deep learning models have demonstrated superior performance in analyzing
complex, high-dimensional data like social media content, especially when dealing with
multimodal inputs such as text, images, and user interaction patterns. The incorporation of causal
modeling techniques allows for a more nuanced understanding of the relationships between
social media behavior and depression, potentially leading to more robust and interpretable
models. Ensemble methods, which combine multiple models to enhance predictive power, can
further boost accuracy and generalizability in depression detection systems.

In addition, extracting data from multiple social media platforms and uniting them in the manner
we propose adds novelty to knowledge making thus improving on new insights. First, it can help
us detect unexploited patterns of how depression might be revealed across different online
environments showing platform-based health status signals. Second, utilizing data across a
variety of cultural contexts and languages can increase the generalizability and transferability of
findings to diverse populations. By taking this approach, one can examine how depression
manifests itself in social media behaviors from different cultures and languages. Finally, the
multi-platform approach will enable researchers to conduct comparisons analysing how
depression indicators in social media differ or are constant across platforms. This comparative
perspective can reveal insights that would not be apparent from analyzing data from a single
platform in isolation. By addressing these aspects, the proposed research not only aims to
improve the accuracy and reliability of depression detection but also contributes to a more
nuanced, culturally sensitive understanding of how mental health is reflected in online behavior.

Expected research Contribution

It's expected that the new research contributions based on the proposed causal ensemble CNN
framework for early detection of depression through social media behavior analysis will include
the following compared to prior studies:

1. Enhanced Depression Detection Accuracy: This paper presents the first multimodal social
media data resource integrated with advanced deep learning algorithms and causal
modeling that can improve early depression detection accuracy. This study applies
modern machine learning tools such as Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), causal
inference techniques, and ensemble method to improve the reliability and accuracy of
identifying depressive symptoms. The study plans to apportion these innovative strategies
across social media channels in order to achieve improved specificity of the detection
signal for subthreshold depression. This novel strategy outperforms previous single-
platform or unimodal methods in overcoming the limitations associated with traditional
platforms and provides the more reliable detection results across various populations.
 2. Comprehensive Cross-Platform Behavioral Mapping: This methodology will allow
researchers to map depressive behaviors over a range of social media platforms by
analyzing several digital footprints. The research aims to develop a system that, by means
of advanced natural language processing and image analysis techniques powered by deep
learning algorithms, is able to promptly detect signals related with the presence of
depression in diverse online environments. A person is not depressed just because he
used depressing words on Twitter or has a high sentimental score in his Instagram photos
— this way of grasping depression through the many-sided lenses allows for drawing
more accurate conclusions about how it shows up and encompasses more specific ways
to intervene with correspondent support strategies.

3. Culturally Sensitive Depression Detection: The research contributes to developing

culturally sensitive depression detection models by incorporating data from diverse
cultural and linguistic backgrounds. By leveraging advanced machine learning techniques
and causal modeling, the study aims to offer insights into how depression manifests
differently across cultures in social media behavior. This culturally informed approach
enhances the applicability and relevance of depression detection systems across diverse
populations, promoting more equitable and effective mental health interventions globally.

4. Ethical and Privacy-Preserving Framework: The method intends to attend crucial ethical
and privacy principles in longitudinal mental health observatory from social media. The intention
is to create an integrated framework that uses state-of-the-art algorithms for detecting depression
while simultaneously satisfying elements related to the privacy of its users in relation to avoiding
even revealing their health status. The use of this approach can help to realize the benefits of
early detection while protecting user privacy and autonomy, which are essential for fostering
trust in these technologies when being deployed in mental health applications.
 METHODOLOGY

Introduction

Here we explore the process that this research of causal inference in social networks for mental
health prediction listed objectives is going to be followed and conducted. This section details the
steps and techniques regarding data pre-processing, creation of causal model formulation,
incorporation for optimised multiple CNN algorithms and ways to evaluate efficacy of the mode.
The initial step in the data preparation will be to collate and pre-process datasets from standard
sources (UCI dataset) concerning unstructured labeled text-linked retroflexes of mental
disabilities. This step should involve data cleaning, normalization and feature extraction to get
the best possible input for your analysis.
The formulation of causal model will help to deal with the issue when it comes to identifying and
controlling confounding variable for complex social network interaction. To do this, researchers
must build a framework that can accommodate error-inducing variables (primarily those latent
such as in network sociometrics). We will do so using state-of-the-art developments in deep
learning and causality studies to build a powerful causal inference model.
Running with a focus on multiple CNN optimized algorithms will be part of the research. In this
phase, a deep learning pipeline will be built using an ensemble of prediction models along with
network analysis optimized fine-tuning. To understand mental illness, transfer learning methods
will be used to find important patterns of features in unstructured text data. The multiple CNN
approach aims to enhance the model's ability to capture complex patterns and relationships
within social network data.
We will evaluate our model efficacy based on a number of metrics and validation techniques. We
will evaluate how well the model predicts mental health problems as well as its effectiveness in
processing complex social network data, and its generalization to real application scenarios. It
will also assess how well the model in identifying causal relationships and adjusting for
confounders.
Most of the research will be performed in Python, which has much better libraries than R for
machine learning, natural language processing and network analysis. Our implementation will
use libraries like: TensorFlow or PyTorch to model the CNNs, and NetworkX for Social
Network Analysis.
This methodology aims to address the limitations of existing methods in accuracy, efficiency,
and robustness, particularly in complex real-world scenarios. The expected outcome is an
accurate deep-learning framework capable of recognizing and tracking causal inference in social
network activity, with a specific focus on mental health prediction. The findings of this study are
anticipated to contribute significantly to the development of early intervention strategies and
preventive measures for mental health issues, leveraging the power of social network analysis
and causal inference.
Method and Instrument for Data Collection
Our approach to collect data as the first step in this research on causal inference in social
networks for mental health prediction will primarily involve existing datasets from reliable
sources, especially from UCI (University of California, Irvine) Machine Learning Repository.
This way, we have access to pre-vetted high-quality data about mental health; and social network
behavior.

The primary instrument for data collection will be the UCI datasets related to mental health and
social media interactions. These datasets typically include:

1. Text data: Posts, comments, and messages from social media platforms, which may
contain indicators of mental health status.

2. User interaction data: Information on user connections, likes, shares, and other social
network activities.

3. Metadata: Timestamp information, user demographics (if available), and other contextual
data.

The process of data acquisition will involve the following steps:

1. Dataset Identification: Carefully review and select appropriate datasets from the UCI
repository that contain relevant information for mental health prediction in social
networks.
 2. Data Download: Retrieve the selected datasets from the UCI Machine Learning
Repository using their provided download mechanisms.

3. Data Verification: Check the integrity and completeness of the downloaded data,
ensuring all necessary components are present and uncorrupted.

4. Initial Preprocessing: Perform preliminary data cleaning and formatting to prepare the
datasets for further analysis. This may include handling missing values, removing
duplicates, and standardizing data formats.

5. Data Integration: If multiple datasets are used, develop a strategy to integrate them
coherently, ensuring consistency in data structure and representation.

6. Privacy and Ethical Considerations: Although the UCI datasets are typically anonymized,
an additional layer of scrutiny will be applied to ensure no personally identifiable
information is present in the data.

7. Data Documentation: Create comprehensive documentation of the datasets used,

including their sources, structures, and any modifications made during the initial
preprocessing stage.

The use of these established datasets addresses several challenges:

1. Ethical Concerns: By using pre-existing, anonymized datasets, the research minimizes

privacy risks associated with direct data collection from individuals.

2. Data Quality: UCI datasets are typically well-curated, reducing the need for extensive
data cleaning and validation.

3. Reproducibility: Using publicly available datasets enhances the reproducibility of the

research findings.
 4. Time Efficiency: Leveraging existing datasets allows more time to be dedicated to model
development and analysis rather than data collection.

This approach to data collection aligns with the research objectives by providing a rich, diverse
dataset that captures the complexities of social network interactions and mental health indicators,
while adhering to ethical standards and research best practices.