IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v17y2020i14p5023-d383757.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Comparative Study of Online Depression Communities in China

Author

Listed:
  • Jingyun Tang

    (School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China)

  • Guang Yu

    (School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China)

  • Xiaoxu Yao

    (School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin 150001, China)

Abstract

Online communities have become a tool for researchers to understand and help individuals with depression. According to their operation mode in terms of management, communities can be divided into management depression communities (MDCs) and lacking-management depression communities (LDCs). This study aimed to investigate the characteristics and impact of LDCs in comparison with MDCs. All postings from the previous year were collected from the LDC and MDC. Keywords were extracted and coded to identify the themes, and a text classifier was built to identify the type of emotions and social support expressed in the postings. Community members were then clustered to explore their different participation patterns. We found that in the LDC, the expression of negative emotions was the most popular theme, there was a lack of information about the treatment of depression and a lack of social support providers, the level of engagement of providers was low, and support seekers did not receive attention. These results reveal the need for community management and can be used to develop more effective measures to support members of online depression communities.

Suggested Citation

  • Jingyun Tang & Guang Yu & Xiaoxu Yao, 2020. "A Comparative Study of Online Depression Communities in China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(14), pages 1-13, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:14:p:5023-:d:383757
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/14/5023/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/14/5023/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Melanie Swan, 2009. "Emerging Patient-Driven Health Care Models: An Examination of Health Social Networks, Consumer Personalized Medicine and Quantified Self-Tracking," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 6(2), pages 1-34, February.
    2. Xianyun Tian & Philip Batterham & Shuang Song & Xiaoxu Yao & Guang Yu, 2018. "Characterizing Depression Issues on Sina Weibo," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 15(4), pages 1-11, April.
    3. Zheng Wang & Guang Yu & Xianyun Tian, 2018. "Exploring Behavior of People with Suicidal Ideation in a Chinese Online Suicidal Community," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(1), pages 1-13, December.
    4. Charrad, Malika & Ghazzali, Nadia & Boiteau, Véronique & Niknafs, Azam, 2014. "NbClust: An R Package for Determining the Relevant Number of Clusters in a Data Set," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 61(i06).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhizhen Yao & Zhenni Ni & Bin Zhang & Jian Du, 2022. "Do Informational and Emotional Elements Differ between Online Psychological and Physiological Disease Communities in China? A Comparative Study of Depression and Diabetes," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(4), pages 1-21, February.
    2. Xuening Wang & Xianyun Tian & Xuwei Pan & Dongxu Wei & Qi Qi, 2021. "What Happens When People with Depression Gather Online?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(16), pages 1-12, August.
    3. Fan Yang & Yao Jiang, 2020. "Heterogeneous Influences of Social Support on Physical and Mental Health: Evidence from China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(18), pages 1-17, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bolívar, Fernando & Duran, Miguel A. & Lozano-Vivas, Ana, 2023. "Bank business models, size, and profitability," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 53(C).
    2. Chuan-Jun Su & Chang-Yu Chiang, 2013. "IAServ: An Intelligent Home Care Web Services Platform in a Cloud for Aging-in-Place," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-25, November.
    3. Reder, Maik & Yürüşen, Nurseda Y. & Melero, Julio J., 2018. "Data-driven learning framework for associating weather conditions and wind turbine failures," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 554-569.
    4. Marcin Gąsior, 2021. "Environmental Attitudes and Willingness to Purchase Online—Classification Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(15), pages 1-17, August.
    5. Roopam Shukla & Ankit Agarwal & Kamna Sachdeva & Juergen Kurths & P. K. Joshi, 2019. "Climate change perception: an analysis of climate change and risk perceptions among farmer types of Indian Western Himalayas," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 152(1), pages 103-119, January.
    6. Katharina Pilgrim & Sabine Bohnet-Joschko, 2022. "Donating Health Data to Research: Influential Characteristics of Individuals Engaging in Self-Tracking," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(15), pages 1-12, August.
    7. Saemi Shin & Won Suck Yoon & Sang-Hoon Byeon, 2022. "Trends in Occupational Infectious Diseases in South Korea and Classification of Industries According to the Risk of Biological Hazards Using K-Means Clustering," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(19), pages 1-19, September.
    8. Guangyu Hu & Xueyan Han & Huixuan Zhou & Yuanli Liu, 2019. "Public Perception on Healthcare Services: Evidence from Social Media Platforms in China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(7), pages 1-10, April.
    9. Song He & Xinyu Song & Xiaoxi Yang & Jijun Yu & Yuqi Wen & Lianlian Wu & Bowei Yan & Jiannan Feng & Xiaochen Bo, 2021. "COMSUC: A web server for the identification of consensus molecular subtypes of cancer based on multiple methods and multi-omics data," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(3), pages 1-10, March.
    10. Jihane El Ouadi & Hanae Errousso & Nicolas Malhene & Siham Benhadou & Hicham Medromi, 2022. "A machine-learning based hybrid algorithm for strategic location of urban bundling hubs to support shared public transport," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 56(5), pages 3215-3258, October.
    11. Cyril Atkinson-Clement & Eléonore Pigalle, 2021. "What can we learn from Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on human behaviour? The case of France’s lockdown," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 8(1), pages 1-12, December.
    12. Kreitmair, Ursula & Bower-Bir, Jacob, 2021. "Too different to solve climate change? Experimental evidence on the effects of production and benefit heterogeneity on collective action," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    13. Getaneh Addis Tessema & Jan van der Borg & Anton Van Rompaey & Steven Van Passel & Enyew Adgo & Amare Sewnet Minale & Kerebih Asrese & Amaury Frankl & Jean Poesen, 2022. "Benefit Segmentation of Tourists to Geosites and Its Implications for Sustainable Development of Geotourism in the Southern Lake Tana Region, Ethiopia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-25, March.
    14. Wu, Tong & Rocha, Juan C. & Berry, Kevin & Chaigneau, Tomas & Hamann, Maike & Lindkvist, Emilie & Qiu, Jiangxiao & Schill, Caroline & Shepon, Alon & Crépin, Anne-Sophie & Folke, Carl, 2024. "Triple Bottom Line or Trilemma? Global Tradeoffs Between Prosperity, Inequality, and the Environment," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 178(C).
    15. Rubeis, Giovanni, 2023. "Liquid Health. Medicine in the age of surveillance capitalism," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 322(C).
    16. Petricli, Gulcan & Inkaya, Tulin & Gokay Emel, Gul, 2024. "Identifying green citizen typologies by mining household-level survey data," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 189(PA).
    17. Young Hyun Kim & Kug Jin Jeon & Chena Lee & Yoon Joo Choi & Hoi-In Jung & Sang-Sun Han, 2021. "Analysis of the mandibular canal course using unsupervised machine learning algorithm," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(11), pages 1-13, November.
    18. Turati, Pietro & Pedroni, Nicola & Zio, Enrico, 2017. "Simulation-based exploration of high-dimensional system models for identifying unexpected events," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 317-330.
    19. Ben Beck & Meghan Winters & Trisalyn Nelson & Chris Pettit & Simone Z Leao & Meead Saberi & Jason Thompson & Sachith Seneviratne & Kerry Nice & Mark Stevenson, 2023. "Developing urban biking typologies: Quantifying the complex interactions of bicycle ridership, bicycle network and built environment characteristics," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 50(1), pages 7-23, January.
    20. Haytham Mohamed Salem & Linda R. Schott & Julia Piaskowski & Asmita Chapagain & Jenifer L. Yost & Erin Brooks & Kendall Kahl & Jodi Johnson-Maynard, 2024. "Evaluating Intra-Field Spatial Variability for Nutrient Management Zone Delineation through Geospatial Techniques and Multivariate Analysis," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(2), pages 1-23, January.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:14:p:5023-:d:383757. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.