Abstract
Background YouTube is currently the second most popular website in the world and it is often used by patients to access health information online. Our aim was to evaluate the content-quality of YouTube videos relating to bipolar disorder. Methods We chose the first 30 videos for four different search phrases: ”bipolar disorder,” ”bipolar disorder treatment,” ”bipolar disorder symptoms” and ”manic depression.” Video contents were evaluated by two independent final year medical students using the validated DISCERN instrument. Qualitative data, quantitative data and the upload source was recorded for analysis. Results Out of the total 120 videos, 80 videos met our inclusion criteria and were evaluated. The mean DISCERN score was 63.5 (out of 75 possible points). This indicates that the quality of YouTube videos on bipolar disorder is excellent. Reliability between the two raters was excellent (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.96). Nearly all videos had symptoms of the disorder (100%) and the impact of the disorder on daily life (98.8%). Videos were mostly uploaded by educational channels (61.3%) and hospitals (16.3%). Videos that had a doctor speaker had a significantly higher average daily views, comments and a video power index (P<0.05). Conclusions The quality of YouTube videos on bipolar disorder is good. We have included a list of the top-quality videos in our paper as they may be used by patients and physicians as a reference to find the most reliable videos for patient education. Having a doctor speaker in a video optimizes a video for higher audience engagement.
YouTube as a source of patient information on brain aneurysms: a content-quality and audience engagement analysis
