Analysis of mental and physical disorders associated with COVID-19 in online health forums: a natural language processing study.
COVID-19
health informatics
information technology
Journal
BMJ open
ISSN: 2044-6055
Titre abrégé: BMJ Open
Pays: England
ID NLM: 101552874
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
05 11 2021
05 11 2021
Historique:
entrez:
6
11
2021
pubmed:
7
11
2021
medline:
12
11
2021
Statut:
epublish
Résumé
Online health forums provide rich and untapped real-time data on population health. Through novel data extraction and natural language processing (NLP) techniques, we characterise the evolution of mental and physical health concerns relating to the COVID-19 pandemic among online health forum users. We obtained data from three leading online health forums: HealthBoards, Inspire and HealthUnlocked, from the period 1 January 2020 to 31 May 2020. Using NLP, we analysed the content of posts related to COVID-19. (1) Proportion of forum posts containing COVID-19 keywords; (2) proportion of forum users making their very first post about COVID-19; (3) proportion of COVID-19-related posts containing content related to physical and mental health comorbidities. Data from 739 434 posts created by 53 134 unique users were analysed. A total of 35 581 posts (4.8%) contained a COVID-19 keyword. Posts discussing COVID-19 and related comorbid disorders spiked in early March to mid-March around the time of global implementation of lockdowns prompting a large number of users to post on online health forums for the first time. Over a quarter of COVID-19-related thread titles mentioned a physical or mental health comorbidity. We demonstrate that it is feasible to characterise the content of online health forum user posts regarding COVID-19 and measure changes over time. The pandemic and corresponding public response has had a significant impact on posters' queries regarding mental health. Social media data sources such as online health forums can be harnessed to strengthen population-level mental health surveillance.
Identifiants
pubmed: 34740937
pii: bmjopen-2021-056601
doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-056601
pmc: PMC8573296
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
e056601Subventions
Organisme : Medical Research Council
ID : MR/S003118/1
Pays : United Kingdom
Informations de copyright
© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2021. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.
Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts
Competing interests: RP has received funds from Janssen, Induction Healthcare and Holmusk outside the current study.
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