Analysis of Anxious Word Usage on Online Health Forums

Abstract

Online health communities and support groups are a valuable source of information for users suffering from a physical or mental illness. Users turn to these forums for moral support or advice on specific conditions, symptoms, or side effects of medications. This paper describes and studies the linguistic patterns of a community of support forum users over time focused on the used of anxious related words. We introduce a methodology to identify groups of individuals exhibiting linguistic patterns associated with anxiety and the correlations between this linguistic pattern and other word usage. We find some evidence that participation in these groups does yield positive effects on their users by reducing the frequency of anxious related word used over time.