Mental health-related conversations on social media and crisis episodes: a time-series regression analysis

TY - JOUR

T1 - Mental health-related conversations on social media and crisis episodes

T2 - a time-series regression analysis

AU - Kolliakou, Anna

AU - Bakolis, Ioannis

AU - Chandran, David

AU - Derczynski, Leon

AU - Werbeloff, Nomi

AU - Osborn, David P.J.

AU - Bontcheva, Kalina

AU - Stewart, Robert

PY - 2020/2/6

Y1 - 2020/2/6

N2 - We aimed to investigate whether daily fluctuations in mental health-relevant Twitter posts are associated with daily fluctuations in mental health crisis episodes. We conducted a primary and replicated time-series analysis of retrospectively collected data from Twitter and two London mental healthcare providers. Daily numbers of ‘crisis episodes’ were defined as incident inpatient, home treatment team and crisis house referrals between 2010 and 2014. Higher volumes of depression and schizophrenia tweets were associated with higher numbers of same-day crisis episodes for both sites. After adjusting for temporal trends, seven-day lagged analyses showed significant positive associations on day 1, changing to negative associations by day 4 and reverting to positive associations by day 7. There was a 15% increase in crisis episodes on days with above-median schizophrenia-related Twitter posts. A temporal association was thus found between Twitter-wide mental health-related social media content and crisis episodes in mental healthcare replicated across two services. Seven-day associations are consistent with both precipitating and longer-term risk associations. Sizes of effects were large enough to have potential local and national relevance and further research is needed to evaluate how services might better anticipate times of higher risk and identify the most vulnerable groups.

AB - We aimed to investigate whether daily fluctuations in mental health-relevant Twitter posts are associated with daily fluctuations in mental health crisis episodes. We conducted a primary and replicated time-series analysis of retrospectively collected data from Twitter and two London mental healthcare providers. Daily numbers of ‘crisis episodes’ were defined as incident inpatient, home treatment team and crisis house referrals between 2010 and 2014. Higher volumes of depression and schizophrenia tweets were associated with higher numbers of same-day crisis episodes for both sites. After adjusting for temporal trends, seven-day lagged analyses showed significant positive associations on day 1, changing to negative associations by day 4 and reverting to positive associations by day 7. There was a 15% increase in crisis episodes on days with above-median schizophrenia-related Twitter posts. A temporal association was thus found between Twitter-wide mental health-related social media content and crisis episodes in mental healthcare replicated across two services. Seven-day associations are consistent with both precipitating and longer-term risk associations. Sizes of effects were large enough to have potential local and national relevance and further research is needed to evaluate how services might better anticipate times of higher risk and identify the most vulnerable groups.

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85079059473

U2 - 10.1038/s41598-020-57835-9

DO - 10.1038/s41598-020-57835-9

M3 - Article

C2 - 32029754

AN - SCOPUS:85079059473

SN - 2045-2322

VL - 10

JO - Scientific Reports

JF - Scientific Reports

IS - 1

M1 - 1342

ER -