Research in the field of social media and mental health has largely focused on the potential harm of social media engagement. High rates of social media use are also evident by individuals who experience mental health problems. Use of social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter is commonplace, with around 65% of American adults and 66% of British adults reporting ownership of at least one active social media account. The number of tweets and themes identified demonstrates the feasibility of implementing study-specific hashtags to explore research questions in the field of mental health and can be used as a basis for other health-related research. The ability to use Twitter to combat stigma and raise awareness of mental health problems indicates the societal benefits that can be facilitated via the platform. In addition, 11 associated subthemes were also identified.Ĭonclusions: The themes derived from the content of the tweets highlight the perceived therapeutic benefits of Twitter through the provision of support and information and the potential for self-management strategies. Results: Four overarching themes were derived from the 132 tweets collected: (1) sense of community (2) raising awareness and combatting stigma (3) safe space for expression and (4) coping and empowerment. Tweets were analyzed thematically to understand the key reasons for discussing mental health using the Twitter platform. Methods: Text mining methods using the Twitter Streaming Application Programming Interface (API) and Twitter Search API were used to collect and organize tweets from the hashtag #WhyWeTweetMH, circulated between September 2015 and November 2015. The study was the first of its kind to implement a study-specific hashtag for research therefore, we also examined how feasible it was to circulate and analyze a study-specific hashtag for mental health research. Objectives: The aim of this study was to explore the reasons why individuals discuss mental health on the social media website Twitter. However, there is limited evidence regarding why people use this emerging platform to discuss mental health problems in the first place. As such, researchers are increasingly using data from social media to retrieve and analyze mental health-related content. School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Medicine and HealthĮmail: Use of the social media website Twitter is highly prevalent and has led to a plethora of Web-based social and health-related data available for use by researchers.
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