Online Social Networks in Health Care: A Study of Mental Disorders on Reddit

The alarming increase in the number of people afflicted by mental health disorders has become one of the major public health problems faced by governments worldwide. Traditional face-to-face clinical interventions are costly, and, in many cases, leave out a sizable number of people who are struggling to improve their mental health conditions. Alternative forms of intervention that have a larger reach and allow for continual interaction while reducing costs are being investigated, including those relying on Online Social Networks (OSNs). Initially designed for promoting friendship, OSNs started to connect people willing to share experiences related to mental health disorders. In light of this fact, we investigate four Reddit online communities: Depression, SuicideWatch, Anxiety and Bipolar. We focus on user activities and interactions, and on the discourse pattern analysis of posts and comments made by the community members. We found that (i) interaction patterns are very similar across these subreddits, and interactions are centered around content, rather than users; (ii) most posts that generate the longest discussion trees are requests for help and, more often than not, multiple users offer support; (iii) the four subreddits share a common language and encouragement words are a frequent pattern, for instance. We hope that the insights unveiled by our analyses will help on building successful online interventions to support people in crisis and assist their counselors.