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Existing methods often fail to capture nuanced emotional and linguistic cues, leading to suboptimal classification of depression severity. This study bridges this gap by leveraging content-based approaches (N-grams) and context-based methods (Sentence Transformers), alongside advanced transformer-based models, to classify mild, moderate, and severe depression using text data sourced from Reddit. By demonstrating the effectiveness of modern NLP techniques in capturing subtle contextual variations, this research highlights the potential of transformer-based models to enhance depression severity detection. The proposed framework offers a scalable and adaptable solution for real-world mental health diagnostics and early intervention systems.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/info16020114","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,7]],"date-time":"2025-02-07T04:00:28Z","timestamp":1738900828000},"page":"114","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":61,"title":["Detection of Depression Severity in Social Media Text Using Transformer-Based Models"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"16","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7536-6969","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Amna","family":"Qasim","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Instituto Polit\u00e9cnico Nacional (IPN), Centro de Investigaci\u00f3n en Computaci\u00f3n (CIC), Mexico City 07320, Mexico"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Gull","family":"Mehak","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Instituto Polit\u00e9cnico Nacional (IPN), Centro de Investigaci\u00f3n en Computaci\u00f3n (CIC), Mexico City 07320, Mexico"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-2877-8135","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Nisar","family":"Hussain","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Instituto Polit\u00e9cnico Nacional (IPN), Centro de Investigaci\u00f3n en Computaci\u00f3n (CIC), Mexico City 07320, Mexico"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-7845-9039","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Alexander","family":"Gelbukh","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Instituto Polit\u00e9cnico Nacional (IPN), Centro de Investigaci\u00f3n en Computaci\u00f3n (CIC), Mexico City 07320, Mexico"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3901-3522","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Grigori","family":"Sidorov","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"Instituto Polit\u00e9cnico Nacional (IPN), Centro de Investigaci\u00f3n en Computaci\u00f3n (CIC), Mexico City 07320, Mexico"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,2,7]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"582","DOI":"10.1016\/j.procs.2021.01.043","article-title":"Text-based depression detection on social media posts: A systematic literature review","volume":"179","author":"William","year":"2021","journal-title":"Proc. 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