Talking about personal recovery in bipolar disorder : Text analysis of public peer online support forum posts

Jagfeld, Glorianna and Humphreys, Chloe and Lobban, Fiona and Rayson, Paul and Jones, Steven (2022) Talking about personal recovery in bipolar disorder : Text analysis of public peer online support forum posts. In: Society for Research in Psychopathology Annual Meeting, 2022-09-08 - 2022-09-11.

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Abstract

Background: Personal recovery (PR), ‘living a satisfying, hopeful life even with the limitations caused by the illness’ is of particular value in bipolar disorder (BD). We complement evidence from researcher-constructed environments (interviews, focus groups) on PR with non-reactive support forum data. Methods: This poster presents two studies of international BD support forums (80% US users). Study 1 analysed applied automatic content analysis to 270K random posts (20M words) of 10K users via automatic content analysis. Study 2 analysed 4.4K PR-relevant posts (1.3M words) by 2K users via corpus framework analysis using the POETIC framework for PR in BD. Results: The main topics in BD forums were: MH symptoms (421K mentions), Professional treatment (208K), Personal narratives (35K), Recovery & self-management (35K), Recurrences & routines (25K). These topics are consistentin line with prior research. Study 2 demonstrated the validity of POETIC and showed three main domains in PR-related discussions: Connectedness (particularly romantic relationships, social support), Purpose & meaning (parenting, work), and Empowerment (self-management). Conclusions: This is the largest-scale analysis of BD online support forums to dateyet and the first study of non-reactive data on PR. Indicating the key PR areas people focus on when posting freely and the language they use, provides helpful starting points for therapists to collaboratively consider these issues with clients.