By Elton Gomes
Although the online community on Reddit has been criticised for being filled with hate, misogyny, and hyper-national values, the site might just help users in battling depression.
Reddit is made up of various communities known as subreddits, and researchers from the University of Utah aimed to assess if visiting a particular subreddit – r/depression – brought about a change in the mental health of users.
Dr Albert Park and Dr Mike Conway assessed how users communicated with others on Reddit and published their study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
Here’s what happened
Dubbed as the “front page of the internet”, Reddit can simply be defined as a discussion website. Users on the website are largely anonymous, and they can submit posts or comment on other posts. Posts that receive the highest number of upvotes show on top of the homepage.
Users on Reddit are part of communities or subreddits, which can be as vague as music or as specific as stalker stories posted on “r/letsnotmeet”.Posters on these subreddits might share their personal stories, ask for advice, or simply lament over how things are going downhill. Researchers at the University of Utah were interested in one such subreddit.
What the researchers did
According to a report in Futurism, Park and Conway assessed the language used by subscribers on the subreddit – r/depression – over a period of time.
They tracked “emotion-related language usages” for members on the subreddit. Members were scored on whether they used positive or negative words. Linguistic dimensions such as “positive emotion,” “negative emotion,” and “sadness” were looked at.
The researchers concluded that “users language improved in nine of 10 categories, suggesting r/depression prompted a ‘positive emotion change’ in users.” The researchers published their findings in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
On April 10, they published a follow-up to the paper where they aimed to focus on the readability of users’ posts in three subreddits - r/depression, r/bipolar, and r/schizophrenia. They wanted to see if participation in a particular subreddit helped users.
The researchers noted that initially, users found it difficult to communicate clearly. However, over a certain period of time, the same users showed statistically significant improvement while using words and the way they communicated with others.
Park, one of the co-authors of the study, said in an interview with Futurism,I started to notice that as they come in more, and they participate more, theyre more calmed down, and theyre articulating a little bit better.”
I cant speak for my coauthors but I want to stress the value of emotional and information support that are provided by your peers through social media platforms like Reddit, Park told Gizmodo.
Social media to the rescue
Reddit might not be the only site helping people battle mental health disorders. A report in the Guardian mentions that Ruby Wax started a social media site named Black Dog Tribe. The website urges people to talk, share experience, and it gives them confidence that they are not alone in their fight against depression. Similarly, Panoply, a crowdsourced website developed by Robert Morris attempts to shed light on improving mental health.
Why you should care
For a long time in India, mental health has received mixed reactions from various individuals. It is high time that Indians recognize that suffering from a mental illness is a serious ailment and that treatment should be sought for such an illness. Given the stigma associated with seeking mental health counselling in the country, forums such as Reddit might just be what Indian users need. However, one must maintain caution while exploring the depths of the Reddit community.