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Author

Glen Coppersmith

Other affiliations: Northeastern University
Bio: Glen Coppersmith is an academic researcher from Johns Hopkins University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Mental health & Social media. The author has an hindex of 22, co-authored 42 publications receiving 3003 citations. Previous affiliations of Glen Coppersmith include Northeastern University.

Papers
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Proceedings ArticleDOI
01 Jun 2014
TL;DR: A novel method for gathering data for a range of mental illnesses quickly and cheaply is presented, then analysis of four in particular: post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, and seasonal affective disorder are focused on.
Abstract: The ubiquity of social media provides a rich opportunity to enhance the data available to mental health clinicians and researchers, enabling a better-informed and better-equipped mental health field. We present analysis of mental health phenomena in publicly available Twitter data, demonstrating how rigorous application of simple natural language processing methods can yield insight into specific disorders as well as mental health writ large, along with evidence that as-of-yet undiscovered linguistic signals relevant to mental health exist in social media. We present a novel method for gathering data for a range of mental illnesses quickly and cheaply, then focus on analysis of four in particular: post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, bipolar disorder, and seasonal affective disorder (SAD). We intend for these proof-of-concept results to inform the necessary ethical discussion regarding the balance between the utility of such data and the privacy of mental health related information.

570 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
07 May 2016
TL;DR: This paper develops a statistical methodology to infer which individuals could undergo transitions from mental health discourse to suicidal ideation, and utilizes semi-anonymous support communities on Reddit as unobtrusive data sources to infer the likelihood of these shifts.
Abstract: History of mental illness is a major factor behind suicide risk and ideation. However research efforts toward characterizing and forecasting this risk is limited due to the paucity of information regarding suicide ideation, exacerbated by the stigma of mental illness. This paper fills gaps in the literature by developing a statistical methodology to infer which individuals could undergo transitions from mental health discourse to suicidal ideation. We utilize semi-anonymous support communities on Reddit as unobtrusive data sources to infer the likelihood of these shifts. We develop language and interactional measures for this purpose, as well as a propensity score matching based statistical approach. Our approach allows us to derive distinct markers of shifts to suicidal ideation. These markers can be modeled in a prediction framework to identify individuals likely to engage in suicidal ideation in the future. We discuss societal and ethical implications of this research.

513 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
27 Aug 2018
TL;DR: The feasibility of using social media data to detect those at risk for suicide, using natural language processing and machine learning techniques to detect quantifiable signals around suicide attempts, and designs for an automated system for estimating suicide risk are described.
Abstract: Suicide is among the 10 most common causes of death, as assessed by the World Health Organization For every death by suicide, an estimated 138 people’s lives are meaningfully affected, and almost

299 citations

Proceedings Article
16 May 2014
TL;DR: PTSD is considered, a serious condition that affects millions worldwide, with especially high rates in military veterans, and its utility is demonstrated by examining differences in language use between PTSD and random individuals, building classifiers to separate these two groups and by detecting elevated rates of PTSD at and around U.S. military bases using classifiers.
Abstract: Traditional mental health studies rely on information primarily collected through personal contact with a health care professional. Recent work has shown the utility of social media data for studying depression, but there have been limited evaluations of other mental health conditions. We consider post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a serious condition that affects millions worldwide, with especially high rates in military veterans. We also present a novel method to obtain a PTSD classifier for social media using simple searches of available Twitter data, a significant reduction in training data cost compared to previous work. We demonstrate its utility by examining differences in language use between PTSD and random individuals, building classifiers to separate these two groups and by detecting elevated rates of PTSD at and around U.S. military bases using our classifiers.

286 citations


Cited by
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Proceedings ArticleDOI
22 Jan 2006
TL;DR: Some of the major results in random graphs and some of the more challenging open problems are reviewed, including those related to the WWW.
Abstract: We will review some of the major results in random graphs and some of the more challenging open problems. We will cover algorithmic and structural questions. We will touch on newer models, including those related to the WWW.

7,116 citations

Proceedings ArticleDOI
07 Dec 2015
TL;DR: The task of free-form and open-ended Visual Question Answering (VQA) is proposed, given an image and a natural language question about the image, the task is to provide an accurate natural language answer.
Abstract: We propose the task of free-form and open-ended Visual Question Answering (VQA). Given an image and a natural language question about the image, the task is to provide an accurate natural language answer. Mirroring real-world scenarios, such as helping the visually impaired, both the questions and answers are open-ended. Visual questions selectively target different areas of an image, including background details and underlying context. As a result, a system that succeeds at VQA typically needs a more detailed understanding of the image and complex reasoning than a system producing generic image captions. Moreover, VQA is amenable to automatic evaluation, since many open-ended answers contain only a few words or a closed set of answers that can be provided in a multiple-choice format. We provide a dataset containing ~0.25M images, ~0.76M questions, and ~10M answers (www.visualqa.org), and discuss the information it provides. Numerous baselines for VQA are provided and compared with human performance.

3,513 citations

Journal Article
TL;DR: Thaler and Sunstein this paper described a general explanation of and advocacy for libertarian paternalism, a term coined by the authors in earlier publications, as a general approach to how leaders, systems, organizations, and governments can nudge people to do the things the nudgers want and need done for the betterment of the nudgees, or of society.
Abstract: NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein Penguin Books, 2009, 312 pp, ISBN 978-0-14-311526-7This book is best described formally as a general explanation of and advocacy for libertarian paternalism, a term coined by the authors in earlier publications. Informally, it is about how leaders, systems, organizations, and governments can nudge people to do the things the nudgers want and need done for the betterment of the nudgees, or of society. It is paternalism in the sense that "it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people's behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier, and better", (p. 5) It is libertarian in that "people should be free to do what they like - and to opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do so", (p. 5) The built-in possibility of opting out or making a different choice preserves freedom of choice even though people's behavior has been influenced by the nature of the presentation of the information or by the structure of the decisionmaking system. I had never heard of libertarian paternalism before reading this book, and I now find it fascinating.Written for a general audience, this book contains mostly social and behavioral science theory and models, but there is considerable discussion of structure and process that has roots in mathematical and quantitative modeling. One of the main applications of this social system is economic choice in investing, selecting and purchasing products and services, systems of taxes, banking (mortgages, borrowing, savings), and retirement systems. Other quantitative social choice systems discussed include environmental effects, health care plans, gambling, and organ donations. Softer issues that are also subject to a nudge-based approach are marriage, education, eating, drinking, smoking, influence, spread of information, and politics. There is something in this book for everyone.The basis for this libertarian paternalism concept is in the social theory called "science of choice", the study of the design and implementation of influence systems on various kinds of people. The terms Econs and Humans, are used to refer to people with either considerable or little rational decision-making talent, respectively. The various libertarian paternalism concepts and systems presented are tested and compared in light of these two types of people. Two foundational issues that this book has in common with another book, Network of Echoes: Imitation, Innovation and Invisible Leaders, that was also reviewed for this issue of the Journal are that 1 ) there are two modes of thinking (or components of the brain) - an automatic (intuitive) process and a reflective (rational) process and 2) the need for conformity and the desire for imitation are powerful forces in human behavior. …

3,435 citations

Posted Content
TL;DR: The task of free-form and open-ended Visual Question Answering (VQA) is proposed, given an image and a natural language question about the image, the task is to provide an accurate natural language answer.
Abstract: We propose the task of free-form and open-ended Visual Question Answering (VQA). Given an image and a natural language question about the image, the task is to provide an accurate natural language answer. Mirroring real-world scenarios, such as helping the visually impaired, both the questions and answers are open-ended. Visual questions selectively target different areas of an image, including background details and underlying context. As a result, a system that succeeds at VQA typically needs a more detailed understanding of the image and complex reasoning than a system producing generic image captions. Moreover, VQA is amenable to automatic evaluation, since many open-ended answers contain only a few words or a closed set of answers that can be provided in a multiple-choice format. We provide a dataset containing ~0.25M images, ~0.76M questions, and ~10M answers (this http URL), and discuss the information it provides. Numerous baselines and methods for VQA are provided and compared with human performance. Our VQA demo is available on CloudCV (this http URL).

2,365 citations