Rajesh Kavya, Crijns Tom J, Ring David
Department of Surgery and Perioperative Care, Dell Medical School, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
J Addict Dis. 2018 Jul-Dec;37(3-4):151-156. doi: 10.1080/10550887.2019.1639485. Epub 2019 Jul 22.
This study gauged public perceptions of the opioid epidemic in online obituaries related to opioid overdose by analyzing emotional themes and tones. A thematic analysis was performed on a consecutive listing of online obituaries from the United States. Three hundred electronic obituaries of people who died due to opioid, heroin, and prescription drug overdose, identified in an online obituary platform (Legacy.com) using the keyword "overdose" were used. Tones, emotions, terms used to describe death, and types of opioids were measured using the string search function of Stata and IBM Watson Tone Analyzer. Our analysis showed that joy and sadness are the most prevalent tones in these obituaries (92% and 88%, respectively) and the most common emotion was love (79%). The two most commonly used terms to describe death due to opioid overdose were 'accidental' (53%) and 'addiction' (34%). The two types of narcotics named were 'heroin' (35%) and 'prescription opioids' (7.8%). Obituaries of people who have died due to opioid overdose contain main themes of love, joy, and sadness. The fact that stigma and shame were less prevalent themes might suggest support of the concept that addiction should be regarded as a disease rather than a criminal behavior.
本研究通过分析情感主题和基调，衡量了在线讣告中公众对阿片类药物流行及阿片类药物过量致死事件的看法。对来自美国的一系列连续在线讣告进行了主题分析。使用在线讣告平台（Legacy.com），通过关键词“过量”识别出300篇因阿片类药物、海洛因和处方药过量致死人员的电子讣告，并使用Stata的字符串搜索功能和IBM Watson Tone Analyzer来衡量基调、情感、描述死亡的用语以及阿片类药物的类型。我们的分析表明，喜悦和悲伤是这些讣告中最普遍的基调（分别为92%和88%），最常见的情感是爱（79%）。描述阿片类药物过量致死最常用的两个词是“意外”（53%）和“成瘾”（34%）。提及的两种麻醉药品类型是“海洛因”（35%）和“处方阿片类药物”（7.8%）。因阿片类药物过量致死人员的讣告包含爱、喜悦和悲伤的主要主题。耻辱感和羞耻感作为不太普遍的主题这一事实，可能表明人们支持将成瘾视为一种疾病而非犯罪行为这一观念。
