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Bursts of Activity: Temporal Patterns of Help-Seeking and Support in Online Mental Health Forums

Published: 20 April 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Recent years have seen a rise in social media platforms that provide peer-to-peer support to individuals suffering from mental distress. Studies on the impact of these platforms have focused on either short-term scales of single-post threads, or long-term changes over arbitrary period of time (months or years). While important, such periods of time do not necessarily follow users’ progressions through acute periods of distress. Using data from Talklife, a mental health platform, we find that user activity follows a distinct pattern of high activity periods with interleaving periods of no activity, and propose a method for identifying such bursts & breaks in activity. We then show how studying activity during bursts can provide a personalized, medium-term analysis for a key question in online mental health communities: What characteristics of user activity lead some users to find support and help, while others fall short? Using two independent outcome metrics, moments of cognitive change and self-reported changes in mood during a burst of activity, we identify two actionable features that can improve outcomes for users: persistence within bursts, and giving complex emotional support to others. Our results demonstrate the value of considering bursts as a natural unit of analysis for psychosocial change in online mental health communities.

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          cover image ACM Conferences
          WWW '20: Proceedings of The Web Conference 2020
          April 2020
          3143 pages
          ISBN:9781450370233
          DOI:10.1145/3366423
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          Published: 20 April 2020

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          • (2024)Supporting Cognitive Reappraisal With Digital Technology: A Content Analysis and Scoping Review of Challenges, Interventions, and Future DirectionsProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642488(1-17)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
          • (2023)Marginalization and the Construction of Mental Illness Narratives Online: Foregrounding Institutions in Technology-Mediated CareProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36101957:CSCW2(1-30)Online publication date: 4-Oct-2023
          • (2023)Supporters First: Understanding Online Social Support on Mental Health from a Supporter PerspectiveProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/35795257:CSCW1(1-28)Online publication date: 16-Apr-2023
          • (2023)Leveraging Causal Inference to Measure the Impact of a Mental Health App on Users’ Well-beingProceedings of the 31st ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization10.1145/3565472.3592967(228-237)Online publication date: 18-Jun-2023
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          • (2021)Fragments of the Past: Curating Peer Support with Perpetrators of Domestic ViolenceProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445611(1-14)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
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