The phenomenology of psychopathology in online communities Open Access

Abstract

Current DSM-based criteria for mental disorders boast high reliability, however, widespread comorbidity, symptom overlap between disorders, and heterogeneity within disorders point to the limited validity of this classification system. Advancement in this domain is, in part, hindered by reification of these diagnostic criteria. A returned focus on clinical phenomenology may offset this and guide identification of alternative classification criteria. The popularity of online mental health communities and emergence of natural language processing methods provide opportunities to characterize clinical phenomena in large samples of text written by individuals endorsing psychopathology. In the present study, we examined free-form, unprompted text posts from six online mental health communities (“subreddits”) from Reddit, a popular discussion based website. To characterize discussions within these communities we quantified semantic similarity between their content, created topic models to describe their thematic elements, and examined membership patterns between communities. We found high overall semantic similarity among mental health subreddits. Interpretable, face-valid themes also emerged from the topic modeling analyses. These themes helped contextualize variability in semantic similarity and were moderately related to known clinical phenomenology. Membership patterns observed in these communities showed little correspondence to established nosology. Taken together, these findings help identify the symptoms and concerns most salient to members of online mental health communities and demonstrate the utility and feasibility of using these samples to characterize psychopathology. 

Table of Contents

Introduction....................................................1

Methods & Materials .......................................4

Results............................................................11

Discussion.......................................................17

References.......................................................22

Appendix.........................................................26

About this Master's Thesis

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School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Psychology
Subfield / Discipline	Clinical Psychology
Degree	M.A.
Submission	Master's Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Psychology, Clinical
Keyword	psychopathology reddit natural language processing
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Micheal Treadway, Emory University
Committee Members	Phillip Wolff, Emory University Edward Craighead, Emory University

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