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With strong marketing advocacy of the benefits of cannabis use for improved mental health, cannabis legalization is a priority among legislators. However, preliminary scientific research does not conclusively associate cannabis with…
Research from a variety of fields including psychology and linguistics have found correlations and patterns in personal attributes and behavior, but efforts to understand the broader heterogeneity in human behavior have not yet integrated…
Substance use disorders (SUDs) are a serious public health concern in the United States. Alcohol and cannabis are two of the most widely used substances. For adolescent/youth users of alcohol or cannabis, we propose a joint Bayesian…
In this paper, we propose a deep, globally normalized topic model that incorporates structural relationships connecting documents in socially generated corpora, such as online forums. Our model (1) captures discursive interactions along…
Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) is a severe form of major depressive disorder in which patients do not achieve remission despite multiple adequate treatment trials. Evidence across pharmacologic options for TRD remains limited, and…
Online communities can serve as meaningful sources of social support, particularly for marginalized and vulnerable groups. Disclosure of personal information facilitates integration into online communities but may also expose individuals to…
Low self-esteem and interpersonal needs (i.e., thwarted belongingness (TB) and perceived burdensomeness (PB)) have a major impact on depression and suicide attempts. Individuals seek social connectedness on social media to boost and…
We analyze gendered communities defined in three different ways: text, users, and sentiment. Differences across these representations reveal facets of communities' distinctive identities, such as social group, topic, and attitudes. Two…
Amid ongoing health crisis, there is a growing necessity to discern possible signs of Wellness Dimensions (WD) manifested in self-narrated text. As the distribution of WD on social media data is intrinsically imbalanced, we experiment the…
With 93% of pro-marijuana population in US favoring legalization of medical marijuana, high expectations of a greater return for Marijuana stocks, and public actively sharing information about medical, recreational and business aspects…
We present Reddit Health Online Talk (RedHOT), a corpus of 22,000 richly annotated social media posts from Reddit spanning 24 health conditions. Annotations include demarcations of spans corresponding to medical claims, personal…
The COVID-19 pandemic has placed a severe mental strain on people in general, and on young people in particular. Online support forums offer opportunities for peer-to-peer health support, which can ease pressure on professional and…
The proliferation of social media platforms has afforded social scientists unprecedented access to vast troves of data on human interactions, facilitating the study of online behavior at an unparalleled scale. These platforms typically…
Childhood Sexual Abuse (CSA) is a menace to society and has long-lasting effects on the mental health of the survivors. From time to time CSA survivors are haunted by various mental health issues in their lifetime. Proper care and attention…
Social media platforms have become valuable tools for understanding public health challenges by offering insights into patient behaviors, medication use, and mental health issues. However, analyzing such data remains difficult due to the…
When discussing difficult topics online, is it common to meaningfully engage with people from diverse perspectives? Why or why not? Could features of the online environment be redesigned to encourage civil conversation across difference? In…
Online forums provide rich environments where users may post questions and comments about different topics. Understanding how people behave in online forums may shed light on the fundamental mechanisms by which collective thinking emerges…
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is a multifaceted mental health condition, particularly challenging for individuals with pre-existing medical conditions. This review critically examines the intersection of PTSD and chronic illnesses…
In this study, we analyze texts of Reddit posts written by students of four major Canadian universities. We gauge the emotional tone and uncover prevailing themes and discussions through longitudinal topic modeling of posts textual data.…
Suicide is a critical global public health issue, with millions experiencing suicidal ideation (SI) each year. Online spaces enable individuals to express SI and seek peer support. While prior research has revealed the potential of…