Investigating Comorbidity of Mental and Physical Disorders in Online Health Forums

Maryam Abdollahyan, Fabrizio Smeraldi, Rashmi Patel, Conrad Bessant

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Online health forums are increasingly used by patients to share information and discuss a broad range of health conditions. In this study, we investigate the presence of comorbidity of mental and physical disorders in users of such forums. We apply natural language processing methods to identify posts where users discuss mental health problems alongside chronic physical diseases, and use data mining techniques to explore the comorbidity patterns in these posts. We compare our findings to those reported in the literature and show how the results obtained are correlated with real-life events.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of APPIS 2020 - 3rd International Conference on Applications of Intelligent Systems
EditorsNicolai Petkov, Nicola Strisciuglio, Carlos M. Travieso-Gonzalez
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery (ACM)
ISBN (Electronic)9781450376303
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 7 Jan 2020

Publication series

NameACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Keywords

  • comorbidity
  • data mining
  • health informatics
  • online health forums

Cite this