A computational study of mental health awareness campaigns on social media

Saha, Koustuv; Torous, John; Ernala, Sindhu Kiranmai; Rizuto, Conor; Stafford, Amanda; Choudhury, Munmun De

doi:10.1093/tbm/ibz028

Cited by 66 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…Prior work found that mental health discourse on Twitter ranges across stigmatizing, inspirational, resource, medical, and social dimensions of expressions [100], and our study revealed similar topical diversity in our dataset. Further, we detected through social media many of the stresses associated with the pandemice.g., prolonged isolation, exposure to pandemic-related death, loss of income/career, increased workload, and lack of pertinent and accurate information.…”

Section: Comparison With Prior Worksupporting

confidence: 78%

Social Media Reveals Psychosocial Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Saha

Torous

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Background: The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused several disruptions in personal and collective lives worldwide. The uncertainties surrounding the pandemic have also led to multi-faceted mental health concerns, which can be exacerbated with precautionary measures such as social distancing and self-quarantining, as well as societal impacts such as economic downturn and job loss. Despite noting this as a mental health tsunami, the psychological effects of the COVID-19 crisis remains unexplored at scale. Consequently, public health stakeholders are currently limited in identifying ways to provide timely and tailored support during these circumstances. Objective: Our work aims to provide insights regarding people's psychosocial concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic by leveraging social media data. We aim to study the temporal and linguistic changes in symptomatic mental health and support-seeking expressions in the pandemic context. Methods: We obtain 60M Twitter streaming posts originating from the U.S. from March, 24 to May, 25, 2020, and compare these with 40M posts from a comparable period in 2019 to causally attribute the effect of COVID-19 on people's social media self-disclosure. Using these datasets, we study people's self-disclosure on social media in terms of symptomatic mental health concerns and expressions seeking support. We employ transfer learning classifiers that identify the social media language indicative of mental health outcomes (anxiety, depression, stress, and suicidal ideation) and support (emotional and informational support). We then examine the changes in psychosocial expressions over time and language, comparing the 2020 and 2019 datasets. Results: We find that all of the examined psychosocial expressions have significantly increased during the COVID-19 crisis, mental health symptomatic expressions have increased by ~14%, and support seeking expressions have increased by 5%, both thematically related to COVID-19. We also observe a steady decline and eventual plateauing in these expressions during the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have been due to habituation or due to supportive policy measures enacted during this period. Our language analyses highlight that people express concerns that are contextually related to the COVID-19 crisis. Conclusions: We studied the psychosocial effects of the COVID-19 crisis by using social media data from 2020, finding that people's mental health symptomatic and support-seeking expressions significantly increased during the COVID-19 period as compared to similar data from 2019. However, this effect gradually lessened over time, suggesting that people adapted to the circumstances and their new normal. Our linguistic analyses revealed that people expressed mental health concerns regarding personal and professional challenges, healthcare and precautionary measures, and pandemic-related awareness. This work shows the potential to provide insights to mental healthcare and stakeholders and policymakers in planning and implementing measures to mitigate mental health risks amidst the health crisis.

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Section: Comparison With Prior Worksupporting

confidence: 78%

Social Media Reveals Psychosocial Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Saha

Torous

et al. 2020

Preprint

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“…In a survey of social media users with mental illness, respondents reported that sharing personal experiences about living with mental illness and opportunities to learn about strategies for coping with mental illness from others were important reasons for using social media (Naslund et al 2017). A computational study of mental health awareness campaigns on Twitter provides further support with inspirational posts and tips being the most shared (Saha et al 2019). Taken together, these studies offer insights about the potential for social media to facilitate access to an informal peer support network, though more research is necessary to examine how these online interactions may impact intentions to seek care, illness self-management, and clinically meaningful outcomes in offline contexts.…”

Section: Access To a Peer Support Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A computational study of mental health awareness campaigns on Twitter reported that while stigmatizing content was rare, it was actually the most spread (re-tweeted) demonstrating that harmful content can travel quickly on social media (Saha et al 2019). Another study was able to map the spread of social media posts about the Blue Whale Challenge, an alleged game promoting suicide, over Twitter, YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, and other forums across 127 countries (Sumner et al 2019).…”

Section: Facing Hostile Interactionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Media and Mental Health: Benefits, Risks, and Opportunities for Research and Practice

Naslund

Bondre

Torous

et al. 2020

J. technol. behav. sci.

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328

121

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“…Furthermore, to address this issue, the study comprised a series of steps including the initial review, design of the codebook, and agreement between the coders. Although computerized machine learning methods have been tested to automatically identify and classify topics in medical research in social media [ 43 ], we used an analysis strategy based on the raters’ clinical expertise in mental health and endocrinology, which constitutes a qualitative advantage compared to automated strategies. On the other hand, it can be argued that #eatingdisorder content may be influenced by awareness campaigns.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Eating Disorder Awareness Campaigns: Thematic and Quantitative Analysis Using Twitter

Viguria¹,

Álvarez-Mon²,

Llavero-Valero³

et al. 2020

J Med Internet Res

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Background Health awareness initiatives are frequent but their efficacy is a matter of controversy. We have investigated the effect of the Eating Disorder Awareness Week and Wake Up Weight Watchers campaigns on Twitter. Objective We aimed to examine whether the Eating Disorder Awareness Week and Wake Up Weight Watchers initiatives increased the volume and dissemination of Twitter conversations related to eating disorders and investigate what content generates the most interest on Twitter. Methods Over a period of 12 consecutive days in 2018, we collected tweets containing the hashtag #wakeupweightwatchers and hashtags related to Eating Disorder Awareness Week (#eatingdisorderawarenessweek, #eatingdisorderawareness, or #EDAW), with the hashtag #eatingdisorder as a control. The content of each tweet was rated as medical, testimony, help offer, awareness, pro-ana, or anti-ana. We analyzed the number of retweets and favorites generated, as well as the potential reach and impact of the hashtags and the characteristics of contributors. Results The number of #wakeupweightwatchers tweets was higher than that of Eating Disorder Awareness Week and #eatingdisorder tweets (3900, 2056, and 1057, respectively). The content of tweets was significantly different between the hashtags analyzed (P<.001). Medical content was lower in the awareness campaigns. Awareness and help offer content were lower in #wakeupweightwatchers tweets. Retweet and favorite ratios were highest in #wakeupweightwatchers tweets. Eating Disorder Awareness Week achieved the highest impact, and very influential contributors participated. Conclusions Both awareness campaigns effectively promoted tweeting about eating disorders. The majority of tweets did not promote any specific preventive or help-seeking behaviors.

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A computational study of mental health awareness campaigns on social media

Abstract: Social media data like that from Twitter can offer new information about how groups of people perceive their medications, share benefits, and report side effects.

Cited by 66 publications

References 50 publications

Social Media Reveals Psychosocial Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Social Media Reveals Psychosocial Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Social Media and Mental Health: Benefits, Risks, and Opportunities for Research and Practice

Eating Disorder Awareness Campaigns: Thematic and Quantitative Analysis Using Twitter

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