Fourteenth International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society

Abstract

Online fora are one of the oldest forms of internet communication. These fora provide internet users the opportunity to connect with others of similar interests and experiences. Online mental health communities are fora for individuals that wish to connect with others based on a shared mental health experience. These digital ecosystems offer an avenue for seeking advice or validation, as well as for freely sharing experiences with similar others within a culture of reduced stigma and social support. Reddit is a popular and readily accessible platform that hosts moderated communities known as subreddits, which include communities for mental health concerns such as depression, anxiety, trauma and eating disorders. This study is an analysis of data collected from the r/depression subreddit by way of the Reddit application programming interface. A conceptual framework was developed for preparing and evaluating the data by way of an empirical content analysis. The content analysis was conducted on 11975 posts made from 9593 unique accounts over a 56-day period. The considered attributes relate to general engagement, the temporal attributes of the dataset, and the demographic and geographic attributes of the users that posted on the r/depression subreddit. This analysis provides insights into the words most frequently used in posts to this subreddit, the time of day and day of the week that most individuals posted to the forum, the age and locational distribution of r/depression subreddit users of the dataset, and how these insights relate to the global prevalence of depression.