Analysis of mental and physical disorders associated with COVID-19 in online health forums: a natural language processing study.
Rashmi PatelFabrizio SmeraldiMaryam AbdollahyanJessica IrvingConrad BessantPublished in: BMJ open (2021)
We demonstrate that it is feasible to characterise the content of online health forum user posts regarding COVID-19 and measure changes over time. The pandemic and corresponding public response has had a significant impact on posters' queries regarding mental health. Social media data sources such as online health forums can be harnessed to strengthen population-level mental health surveillance.