scholarly journals From Lay Depression Narratives to Secular Ritual Healing: An Online Ethnography of Mental Health Forums

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Domonkos Sik
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Online Discussions ◽  
Online Forums ◽  
Online Ethnography ◽  
Ritual Healing

AbstractThe article aims at analysing online depression forums enabling lay reinterpretation and criticism of expert biomedical discourses. Firstly, two contrasting interpretations of depression are reconstructed: expert psy-discourses are confronted with the phenomenological descriptions of lay experiences, with a special emphasis on online forums as empirical platforms hosting such debates. After clarifying the general theoretical stakes concerning contested ‘depression narratives’, the results of an online ethnography are introduced: the main topics appearing in online discussions are summarised (analysing how the abstract tensions between lay and expert discourses appear in the actual discussions), along with the idealtypical discursive logics (analysing pragmatic advises, attempts of reframing self-narratives and expressions of unconditional recognition). Finally, based on these analyses an attempt is made to explore the latent functionality of online depression forums by referring to a secular ‘ritual healing’ existing as an unreflected, contingent potential.

Argumentation and Incivility in Online Forums: The Case of Discussing Colorism

2021 ◽  
pp. 0261927X2110668
Author(s):  
Susan L. Kline ◽  
Tiffany N. White ◽  
Ralph J. Martins
Keyword(s):  
Skin Tone ◽  
Online Discussions ◽  
Online Forums ◽  
Ad Hominem

Conversation argument theory is used to analyze seven online discussions of colorism, a form of skin tone prejudice. Discussants’ comments (N = 587) expressed ad hominem acts (17%), reasoning activities (59%) and delimitors (e.g., addressed objections, 37%). Unlike general forums confrontation-initiated forums had more ad hominem acts. Posts with compared to posts without ad hominem acts had fewer reasoning activities and delimitors. General colorism forums were the most civil and developed, findings that have implications for designing online forums.

scholarly journals Microdosing Psychedelics: Personality, mental health, and creativity differences in microdosers

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Anderson ◽  
Rotem Petranker ◽  
Daniel Rosenbaum ◽  
Cory Weissman ◽  
Le-Anh Dinh-Williams ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Dysfunctional Attitudes ◽  
Online Forums ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Full Dose ◽  
Regular Consumption ◽  
Exciting Potential ◽  
Clinical Benefits ◽  
Mental Well Being

Microdosing psychedelics - the regular consumption of small amounts of psychedelic substances such as LSD or psilocybin - is a growing trend in popular culture. Recent studies on full-dose psychedelic psychotherapy reveal promising benefits for mental well-being, especially for depression and end-of-life anxiety. While full-dose therapies include perception-distorting properties, microdosing may provide complementary clinical benefits using lower-risk, non-hallucinogenic doses. No experimental study has evaluated psychedelic microdosing, however; this pre-registered study is the first to investigate microdosing psychedelics and mental health. Recruited from online forums, current and former microdosers scored lower on measures of dysfunctional attitudes and negative emotionality and higher on wisdom, open-mindedness, and creativity when compared to non-microdosing controls. These findings provide promising initial evidence that warrants controlled experimental research to directly test safety and clinical efficacy. As microdoses are easier to administer than full-doses, this new paradigm has the exciting potential to shape future psychedelic research.

scholarly journals THE INFLUENCE OF PERSONALITY AND LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY ON ESL LEARNERS' WORD CONTRIBUTIONS IN FACE-TO-FACE AND SYNCHRONOUS ONLINE FORUMS

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 199-221
Author(s):  
Shin Yi Chew ◽  
Lee Luan Ng
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Online Discussions ◽  
Online Forums ◽  
School Students ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Esl Learners ◽  
Synchronous Online

Background and Purpose: Recent technological advancements and Covid-19 pandemic have prompted more opportunities for online learning. However, there is a dearth of empirical research that is focused on high school students. Therefore, this study aims to obtain a more comprehensive view of ESL learners’ involvement or word contributions in a ‘normal’ face-to-face situation and in a synchronous online text-based environment by relating it to their personality and language proficiency.   Methodology: In this study, a quasi-experiment was carried out over four weeks. It involved eight sessions of face-to-face and online discussions with 48 Malaysian high school students who were divided into two matched-sample groups. The participants' feedback was used to support and provide insights on the findings. The quantitative data were analysed using using IBM SPSS statistics 26 software while the participants’ responses to the online feedback session were analysed using open coding and axial coding strategies.   Findings: Statistically significant difference was found in learners’ word contributions during face-to-face and online discussions. Apart from the extroverts with high-intermediate language proficiency, the other groups of learners who are either introverts or having lower level language proficiency were found to produce significantly more words in synchronous online text-based discussions. The non-face-to-face context of online forums might have lowered the learners’ level of anxiety and increased their confidence to interact with their peers. Contributions: Learners’ personalities and language proficiency levels should be considered when choosing a discussion setting and when facilitating discussion activities. More support should be provided for the less proficient or introverted learners to express themselves in a face-to-face discussion.     Keywords: Personality, Language proficiency, Computer-mediated communication, Synchronous text-based online discussions, Word contributions   Cite as: Chew, S. Y., & Ng, L. L. (2021). The influence of personality and language proficiency on ESL learners' word contributions in face-to-face and synchronous online forums. Journal of Nusantara Studies, 6(1), 199-221. http://dx.doi.org/10.24200/jonus.vol6iss1pp199-221

Time-dependent association between the discussions of mass protests and mental health on social media during the 2019 anti-government social unrest in Hong Kong: A text mining study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Shaunlyn Chan ◽  
Takeshi Hamamura
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Positive Association ◽  
Time Dependent ◽  
Online Forums ◽  
Social Unrest ◽  
Time Lagged ◽  
Mass Protest ◽  
Dynamic Relationships ◽  
Health Discourse

PurposeSocial media are increasingly pivotal as the platform where activists and observers plan, promote, and respond to collective actions. To examine how mental health discourse might be impacted by mass protests, this study analyzed their time-dependent association during the 2019 anti-government social unrest in Hong Kong.MethodsConsecutive day-by-day user-generated content on online forums and social network sites (SNS) from June to November 2019 was obtained. A Cantonese term-list was created to identify terms related to mass protests and mental health discourse. The frequency of comments containing such terms was analyzed using time series models.ResultsThere were 3,572,665 social media comments in the investigation period. As hypothesized, the frequency of comments with mass protest terms was higher on days with mass protests than on days without. Frequency of comments with both mass protest- and mental health-terms was also higher on days with protests than days without. A time-lagged effect of protest-terms was found on online forums but not on SNS. Our results suggest a positive association between offline protest activities and online psychological reactions.ConclusionsSocial media content reveals discussion of mental health concerns stemming from, or exacerbated by, social unrest. The potential mutual influences between mass protests and online reactions, as well as the functional differences between online forums and SNS in this regard, are discussed. Street protests and their associated mental health discourse can be readily detected on popular online forums. Mental health services should consider such dynamic relationships between on- and offline activities.

scholarly journals Insights on mental health when living with rheumatoid arthritis: a descriptive qualitative study of threads on the Reddit website

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie Y. E. Park ◽  
Alyssa M. Howren ◽  
Eileen Davidson ◽  
Mary A. De Vera
Keyword(s):  
Rheumatoid Arthritis ◽  
Mental Health ◽  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Suicide Ideation ◽  
Health Resources ◽  
Online Forums ◽  
The Social ◽  
News Website ◽  
Social News ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative

Abstract Background Reddit is a highly visited social news and discussion website where individuals anonymously ask questions, post opinions and share experiences, which provide a valuable pool of publicly available data. Our objective was to systematically search and analyze threads on the social news website, Reddit, to understand experiences of individuals with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) regarding their mental health. Methods We conducted a patient-oriented descriptive qualitative study. We identified threads from two subreddits, “r/Thritis” and “r/Rheumatoid”, using keywords such as “mood”, “mental health”, “stressed”, “depressed”, “anxious” over a 1-year period between June 2018 and June 2019. For included threads, we extracted the title, original post, and corresponding comments and responses. We applied thematic analysis using an inductive approach. Results Of 81 threads identified, we included 27. We identified four themes: 1) Navigating the management of RA explores how the physical impacts of the disease, lack of health resources/support and the complexity of medications affect mental health; 2) Experiencing impact on relationships and social isolation includes experiencing misconceptions of RA, feeling misunderstood and feeling guilt; 3) Experiencing loss, touches on the helplessness brought by challenges with performing self-defining activities such as self-care, work, and childbearing/parenting; and finally, 4) Experiencing emotional struggles captures how tension between fighting through and despair has led some to suicide ideation and thoughts of death. Conclusions Online forums and communities such as Reddit have created opportunities for individuals with RA to share experiences on mental health matters, which they may not necessarily be able to share with others.

Ritual healing and mental health in India

2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (6) ◽  
pp. 829-849 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Sax
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Ritual Healing

scholarly journals Can the internet tell that you’re depressed? Machine learning of language use on Twitter reveals weak and non-specific predictions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Kelley ◽  
Caoimhe Ní Mhaonaigh ◽  
Louise Burke ◽  
Robert Whelan ◽  
Claire Gillan
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Predictive Performance ◽  
Depression Symptoms ◽  
Online Forums ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Obsessive Compulsive ◽  
Compulsive Disorder ◽  
Indirect Measures ◽  
Out Of Sample

Background: Depressed individuals use language differently than healthy controls and it has been proposed that social media posts could therefore be used to identify depression. But much of the evidence behind this claim relies on indirect measures of mental health that are sometimes circular, such as statements of self-diagnosis (“Got an OCD diagnosis today”) on social media or membership in disorder-specific online forums. Relatedly, few studies have tested if these language features are specific to depression versus other aspects of mental health. Methods: We analyzed the Tweets of 1,006 participants who completed questionnaires assessing symptoms of depression and 8 other mental health conditions. Daily Tweets were subjected to textual analysis and the resulting linguistic features were used to train an Elastic Net model on depression severity, using nested cross validation. We then tested performance in a held-out test set (30%), comparing predictions of depression versus 8 other aspects of mental health. Results: The depression trained model had only modest predictive performance when tested out of sample, explaining just 2.5% of variance in depression symptoms (R2 = 0.025). The performance of this model was as-good or superior when used to identify other aspects of mental health: schizotypy (R2 = 0.035), social anxiety (R2 = 0.025), eating disorders (R2 = 0.025), generalized anxiety (R2 = 0.041), above chance for obsessive-compulsive disorder (R2 = 0.011), apathy (R2 = 0.008), but not significant for alcohol abuse (R2 = -0.012).

scholarly journals Profiling Commenters on Mental Health–Related Online Forums: A Methodological Example Focusing on Eating Disorder–Related Commenters

10.2196/12555 ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. e12555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan McCaig ◽  
Mark T Elliott ◽  
Cynthia SQ Siew ◽  
Lukasz Walasek ◽  
Caroline Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Eating Disorder ◽  
Network Analysis ◽  
Community Detection ◽  
The Body ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Psychological Interventions ◽  
Online Forums ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Health Related

Background Understanding the characteristics of commenters on mental health–related online forums is vital for the development of effective psychological interventions in these communities. The way in which commenters interact can enhance our understanding of their characteristics. Objective Using eating disorder–related (EDR) forums as an example, this study detailed a methodology that aimed to determine subtypes of mental health–related forums and profile their commenters based on the other forums to which they contributed. Methods The researchers identified all public EDR forums (with ≥500 contributing commenters between March 2017 and February 2018) on a large Web-based discussion platform (Reddit). A mixed-methods approach comprising network analysis with community detection, text mining, and manual review identified subtypes of EDR forums. For each subtype, another network analysis with community detection was conducted using the EDR forum commenter overlap between 50 forums on which the commenters also commented. The topics of forums in each detected community were then manually reviewed to identify the shared interests of each subtype of EDR forum commenters. Results Six subtypes of EDR forums were identified, to which 14,024 commenters had contributed. The results focus on 2 subtypes—proeating disorder and thinspiration—and communities of commenters within both subtypes. Within the proeating disorder subtype, 3 communities of commenters were detected that related to the body and eating, mental health, and women, appearance, and mixed topics. With regard to the thinspiration group, 78.17% (849/1086) of commenters had also commented on pornographic forums and 16.66% (181/1086) had contributed to proeating disorder forums. Conclusions The article exemplifies a methodology that provides insight into subtypes of mental health–related forums and the characteristics of their commenters. The findings have implications for future research and Web-based psychological interventions. With the publicly available data and code provided, researchers can easily reproduce the analyses or utilize the methodology to investigate other mental health–related forums.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document