Abstract
People who are suspected to suffer mental disorders often explore online communities to gather medical information. Such medical information benefits these people by facilitating self-diagnosis and social support for the mental disorders. At the same time, however, misinformation can aggravate mental disorders and worsen psychological status. Focusing on two representative mental illnesses, bipolar and depressive disorders, this study analyzed how users shared their experiences with illness and provided advice. Postings for bipolar and depressive disorders were gathered from subreddit communities and used for semantic network analysis. Results showed that users in both communities described sleep disorder episodes and financial problems with negative emotional expressions. Users in the bipolar disorder community showed more interest in the topic of medication, whereas users in the depressive disorder community were more interested in suicide issues. We discuss how these properties in the subreddit communities can be applied to understand user experiences of bipolar and depressive disorders.
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