%0 Journal Article
%@ 2368-7959
%I JMIR Publications
%V 6
%N 7
%P e13946
%T Predicting Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Risk: A Machine Learning Approach
%A Wshah,Safwan
%A Skalka,Christian
%A Price,Matthew
%+ University of Vermont, 33 Colchester Ave, Burlington, VT, 05405, United States, 1 8026568086, safwan.wshah@uvm.edu
%K PTSD
%K machine learning
%K predictive algorithms
%D 2019
%7 22.07.2019
%9 Original Paper
%J JMIR Ment Health
%G English
%X Background: A majority of adults in the United States are exposed to a potentially traumatic event but only a handful go on to develop impairing mental health conditions such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Objective: Identifying those at elevated risk shortly after trauma exposure is a clinical challenge. The aim of this study was to develop computational methods to more effectively identify at-risk patients and, thereby, support better early interventions. Methods: We proposed machine learning (ML) induction of models to automatically predict elevated PTSD symptoms in patients 1 month after a trauma, using self-reported symptoms from data collected via smartphones. Results: We show that an ensemble model accurately predicts elevated PTSD symptoms, with an area under the curve (AUC) of .85, using a bag of support vector machines, naive Bayes, logistic regression, and random forest algorithms. Furthermore, we show that only 7 self-reported items (features) are needed to obtain this AUC. Most importantly, we show that accurate predictions can be made 10 to 20 days posttrauma. Conclusions: These results suggest that simple smartphone-based patient surveys, coupled with automated analysis using ML-trained models, can identify those at risk for developing elevated PTSD symptoms and thus target them for early intervention. 
%M 31333201
%R 10.2196/13946
%U http://mental.jmir.org/2019/7/e13946/
%U https://doi.org/10.2196/13946
%U http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31333201