People with depression who use Facebook as a coping mechanism are at an increased risk for developing Facebook Addiction Disorder, or FAD, which may reinforce depression symptoms, according to findings published in Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.

“Although in the short term this coping strategy may foster positive mood, in the long term it enhances the risk of developing FAD, which negatively impacts subjective well-being,” Julia Brailovskaia, PhD, of the department of psychology at Ruhr-University Bochum’s Mental Health Research and Treatment Center in Germany, and colleagues wrote. “Thus, the current results emphasize the necessity to make excessive Facebook use a subject of discussion in interventions for depressed persons.”