Center for Psychotherapy Research, Heidelberg University Hospital, Bergheimer Strasse 54, 69115, Heidelberg, Germany.
Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2023 Jun;32(6):975-985. doi: 10.1007/s00787-022-02067-7. Epub 2022 Aug 26.
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, increases in suicidal ideation and suicide attempts in adolescents have been registered. Many adolescents experiencing suicidal ideation turn to online communities for social support. In this retrospective observational study, we investigated the communication-language style, contents and user activity-in 7975 unique posts and 51,119 comments by N = 2862 active adolescent users in a large suicidal ideation support community (SISC) on the social media website reddit.com in the onset period of the COVID-19 pandemic. We found significant relative changes in language style markers for hopelessness such as negative emotion words (+ 10.00%) and positive emotion words (- 3.45%) as well as for social disengagement such as social references (- 8.63%) and 2nd person pronouns (- 33.97%) since the outbreak of the pandemic. Using topic modeling with Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), we identified significant changes in content for the topics Hopelessness (+ 23.98%), Suicide Methods (+ 17.11%), Social Support (- 14.91%), and Reaching Out to users (- 28.97%). Changes in user activity point to an increased expression of mental health issues and decreased engagement with other users. The results indicate a potential shift in communication patterns with more adolescent users expressing their suicidal ideation rather than relating with or supporting other users during the COVID-19 pandemic.
自 COVID-19 大流行爆发以来，青少年的自杀意念和自杀企图增加。许多有自杀意念的青少年转向在线社区寻求社会支持。在这项回顾性观察研究中，我们研究了在 COVID-19 大流行期间，在社交媒体网站 reddit.com 上的一个大型自杀意念支持社区（SISC）中，2862 名活跃青少年用户的 7975 条独特帖子和 51119 条评论中的交流语言风格、内容和用户活动。我们发现，在语言风格标记方面，绝望情绪（如负面情绪词增加了 10.00%，积极情绪词减少了 3.45%）和社会脱离（如社会参考减少了 8.63%，第二人称代词减少了 33.97%）出现了显著的相对变化。使用潜在狄利克雷分配（Latent Dirichlet Allocation，LDA）的主题建模，我们确定了主题的内容发生了显著变化，包括绝望感（增加了 23.98%）、自杀方法（增加了 17.11%）、社会支持（减少了 14.91%）和与用户联系（减少了 28.97%）。用户活动的变化表明心理健康问题表达的增加，以及与其他用户的互动减少。研究结果表明，在 COVID-19 大流行期间，青少年的交流模式可能发生了转变，更多的青少年用户表达了他们的自杀意念，而不是与其他用户联系或支持其他用户。
