Depression-related Imagery on Instagram

Despite the well-established finding that people share negative emotions less openly than positive ones, a hashtag search for depression-related terms in Instagram yields millions of images. In this study, we examined depression-related images on Instagram along with their accompanying captions. We want to better understand the role of photo sharing in the lives of people who suffer from depression or who frame their experience as such; specifically, whether this practice engages support networks and how social computing systems can be designed to support such interactions. To lay the groundwork for further investigation, we report here on content analysis of depression-related posts.