Background A large number of patient narratives are available on various web services. As for web question and answer services, patient questions often relate to medical needs, and we expect these questions to provide clues for a better understanding of patients’ medical needs. Objective This study aimed to extract patients’ needs and classify them into thematic categories. Clarifying patient needs is the first step in solving social issues that patients with cancer encounter. Methods For this study, we used patient question texts containing the key phrase “breast cancer,“ available at the Yahoo! Japan question and answer service, Yahoo! Chiebukuro, which contains over 60,000 questions on cancer. First, we converted the question text into a vector representation. Next, the relevance between patient needs and existing cancer needs categories was calculated based on cosine similarity. Results The proportion of correct classifications in our proposed method was approximately 70%. Considering the results of classifying questions, we found the variation and the number of needs. Conclusions We created 3 corpora to classify the problems of patients with cancer. The proposed method was able to classify the problems considering the question text. Moreover, as an application example, the question text that included the side effect signaling of drugs and the unmet needs of cancer patients could be extracted. Revealing these needs is important to fulfill the medical needs of patients with cancer.

Background Internalizing mental illnesses associated with psychological distress are often underdetected. Text-based detection using natural language processing (NLP) methods is increasingly being used to complement conventional detection efforts. However, these approaches often rely on self-disclosure through autobiographical narratives that may not always be possible, especially in the context of the collectivistic Japanese culture. Objective We propose the use of narrative writing as an alternative resource for mental illness detection in youth. Accordingly, in this study, we investigated the textual characteristics of narratives written by youth with psychological distress; our research focuses on the detection of psychopathological tendencies in written imaginative narratives. Methods Using NLP tools such as stylometric measures and lexicon-based sentiment analysis, we examined short narratives from 52 Japanese youth (mean age 19.8 years, SD 3.1) obtained through crowdsourcing. Participants wrote a short narrative introduction to an imagined story before completing a questionnaire to quantify their tendencies toward psychological distress. Based on this score, participants were categorized into higher distress and lower distress groups. The written narratives were then analyzed using NLP tools and examined for between-group differences. Although outside the scope of this study, we also carried out a supplementary analysis of narratives written by adults using the same procedure. Results Youth demonstrating higher tendencies toward psychological distress used significantly more positive (happiness-related) words, revealing differences in valence of the narrative content. No other significant differences were observed between the high and low distress groups. Conclusions Youth with tendencies toward mental illness were found to write more positive stories that contained more happiness-related terms. These results may potentially have widespread implications on psychological distress screening on online platforms, particularly in cultures such as Japan that are not accustomed to self-disclosure. Although the mechanisms that we propose in explaining our results are speculative, we believe that this interpretation paves the way for future research in online surveillance and detection efforts.

BACKGROUND Currently, a large number of patient narratives are available on various web services. On web question and answer (QA) services, patient questions often relate to medical needs. Therefore, we expect these questions to provide clues to understanding patients’ medical needs. OBJECTIVE This study aims to extract patient needs and classify them into thematic categories. To clarify the patient's needs would be the first step to solve social issues for cancer patients. METHODS The material of this study is patient question texts containing the keyword “breast cancer" in the Yahoo! Japan QA service, Yahoo! Chiebukuro, which contains over 60,000 questions on cancer. First, we convert the question text into a vector representation; then, the relevance between patient needs and existing cancer needs categories are calculated based on cosine similarity. RESULTS The proportion of correct classifications in our proposed method is approximately 70%. We reveal the variation and the number of needs from the results of classifying questions. CONCLUSIONS There are various clinical applications to applying the proposed method such as identifying the side effect signaling of drugs and the unmet needs of cancer patients. Revealing these needs is important to satisfy the medical needs of cancer patients.

Background and objective: We often treat the dangers of social networking as similar across sites. However, this study demonstrates that users' perceptions of social media safety differs between social media platforms.Methods: We conducted a questionnaire of Japanese social media users (N = 7198) using an adapted version of the Psychological Safety Scale, to investigate the relationship between perceived psychological safety and the operational statistics associated with each social media platform. We then conducted data collection examining subjective classification from a different set of users (N = 2304).Results: Of the social networking sites examined, “Yahoo! Chiebukuro" and "note" were rated with high perceived psychological safety.The higher the number of monthly active users in Japan, the higher the psychological safety score, and there was also a positive correlation between login frequency and psychological safety. In addition, high openness and high self-disclosure were associated with low psychological safety.Conclusions: The psychological safety of social media sites was related to the number of domestic users, the number of logins, openness, and self-disclosure. These results of this study can be used as a reference for the design of social media platforms.

BACKGROUND Internalizing mental illnesses associated with psychological distress are often under-detected. Text-based detection using natural language processing methods are increasingly used to complement conventional detection efforts. However, these often rely on self-disclosure through autobiographical narratives, that may not always be possible, especially in collectivistic Japanese culture. As such, we propose the use of narrative writing as an alternative task for mental illness detection in youths. Accordingly, this study investigates the textual characteristics of narratives that are written by youths with psychological distress. OBJECTIVE Our research focuses on the detection of psychopathological tendencies in written imaginative narratives. We apply NLP tools, such as stylometric measures and lexicon-based sentiment analysis. METHODS Using stylometric measures and sentiment analyses, we examined short narratives from 52 Japanese youths (M = 19.81, SD = 20.01) through crowdsourcing. Participants wrote a short narrative introduction to an imagined story, before completing a questionnaire on their psychological distress tendencies. Based on this score, participants were categorized into Higher distress and Lower distress groups. Written narratives were then analyzed using stylometric measures and sentiment analysis, and examined for between-group differences. RESULTS Youths at higher tendencies towards psychological distress used significantly more positive (happiness-related) words, revealing differences in valence of the narrative content. This paves the way for online surveillance and detection efforts, particularly in Japan where youths may be hesitant to engage in self-disclosure. We discuss the implications of these findings in more detail. CONCLUSIONS Youths with tendencies towards mental illness were found to write more positive stories that contained more happiness-related terms. These results may potentially have more widespread implications on screening, particularly in cultures like Japan that are not accustomed to self-disclosure.