Early detection of risks on the Internet: an exploratory campaign

This paper summarizes the activities related to the CLEF lab on early risk prediction on the Internet (eRisk). eRisk was initiated in 2017 as an attempt to set the experimental foundations of early risk detection. The first edition essentially focused on a pilot task on early detection of signs of depression. In 2018, the lab was enlarged and included an additional task oriented to early detection of signs of anorexia.We review here the main lessons learned and we discuss our plans for 2019.

keywords: early risk prediction, text mining, evaluation, depression, eating disorders, anorexia