Online Support Research Articles

Developing a Knowledge-Based Online Recommendation System to Guide STD Patients Through Their Journey

Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) significantly impact public health, affecting one in five U.S. adults and imposing substantial economic burdens. Many at-risk individuals seek information and support online rather than through regular testing, facing challenges due to fragmented information and a lack of personalized recommendations. This study develops an online health recommendation system (OHRS) tailored for STD patients, integrating informational and emotional support based on their disease journey. Using a BERT-based named entity recognition (NER) algorithm, the system identifies patient emotions and stages from online posts, providing relevant support resources. Data collection for designing a recommendation engine included analyzing online posts and consulting healthcare experts. The system's effectiveness was validated through user-based simulation studies. Key contributions include developing text-mining algorithms, creating a knowledge-based recommendation system, and proposing design principles for AI-driven support systems for stigmatized conditions.

Challenges, coping strategies, and sources of support available to South African parents with children with autism spectrum disorder during the COVID-19 lockdown: a qualitative study

Parenting a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is known to be complex and challenging and likely to be exacerbated under conditions of stress and uncertainty. We aimed to explore how parents experienced parenting their child with ASD during the initial COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. We also aimed to identify the coping strategies and sources of support available to them during this time. Using an exploratory qualitative design within an interpretivist paradigm, we interviewed 23 parents of children with ASD between the ages of 6 and 12 years. Parents were recruited from an online support group for ASD in South Africa. Interviews were semi-structured and transcribed verbatim for thematic analysis, using ATLAS.ti. We identified five themes: (1) The experience of communicating lockdown rules and disease containment measures to children, (2) Consequences of disruption to routine, (3) Parenting and interpersonal relationships in conditions of confinement, (4) Help-seeking and sources of support, and (5) Finding ways to cope amid a crisis. The findings demonstrate that the initial COVID-19 lockdown placed parents of children with ASD under considerable stress. Disrupted routines and interrupted access to financial, psychological, social, and educational support during the initial lockdown period exacerbated parenting experiences. This study highlights the importance of providing parents of children with ASD strategies to communicate significant change and various forms of support to navigate the negative effects of routine disruptions during conditions of uncertainty and crisis.

Different Deeds, Different Needs—Types of Violence Against Women and Social Support Sought Online

Women, as victims of violence, among which intimate partner violence prevails, venture online to seek a supportive community. Members of online support groups differ in the experiences and needs they have and support they seek. The objective of this research was to explore the difference in types of support sought and support received between women who self-report having been a witness/victim of violence and others who directly ask for help without explaining their circumstances. For this purpose, content analysis of 600 randomly selected starting posts from an online support community was performed. The results reveal an association between the needs expressed and the experience of violence described. Although users most frequently sought informational support, those recounting sexual violence more often asked for emotional support or were looking for an emotional release. Posts describing a different kind of violence were more likely to bring more support than short posts directly asking for help. The findings are important since women in a violent relationship tend to become more isolated or controlled by their partners, pointing to the crucial role of online support in helping and encouraging those women to take the first step in seeking help from formal institutions.

Online support groups for family caregivers: A qualitative exploration of social support and engagement.

This qualitative research explored family caregivers' engagement and social support in a single online support group (OSG). It sought to answer two research questions: Q1: Was social support evident in the OSG? If so what types and how did these types relate to engagement? Q2: Were elements from the Context, Content and Delivery conceptual framework evident in the OSG? If so, what were the key elements of this group? Eighteen semi-structured interviews were carried out with members of a family caregiver OSG in Ireland. Data were analysed using deductive qualitative analysis with a codebook created from one typology of social support and the Context, Content and Delivery conceptual framework for engagement in web-based technologies. For Q1, all types of social support were generated in the OSG. All had a positive impact on engagement. Informational support (17/18 respondents) and emotional support (15/18 respondents) were the highest support experienced by the group. For Q2, we found evidence for 11 key elements of the conceptual framework. Myriad sub-elements had positive, negative and mixed impacts on engagement. These elements generally related to positive developments of social support by the respondents. Drawing together the findings, we present a new framework, the Journey of Engagement and Support in Online Support Groups for Family Caregivers. This maps the stages for engagement and support in an OSG and can be used by practitioners for running OSG and researchers to generate testable hypotheses about the relationship between social support and engagement.

Unveiling the "Toxic" World of #Meanspo: Understanding Users' Emerging Online Eating Disorder Practices in X/Twitter

Meanspo, an antagonistic form of online support within the eating disorder (ED) community, involves the direct solicitation or sharing of aggressive and insulting online content. This study presents findings from a comprehensive qualitative analysis of #meanspo content on X (previously Twitter ) from May 2020 (N=752). Our analysis of tweets reveals that posts tagged with #meanspo can be of various natures. While commonly associated with extremely derogatory ED content, more than 80% of posts with the meanspo tag on X were non-aggressive. The study also explores potential inconsistencies in voluntary and involuntary meanspo specific content moderation, prompting inquiries into X's regulatory policies against such content and the distinct online self-presentation strategies employed by community members. Future contextual research is needed to understand the evolving nature of this social phenomenon and its potential clinical impacts on users over time, particularly concerning the unhealthy adoption of such content. TRIGGER WARNING: Explicit language & potentially triggering content.

Establishing the Global Feelings of People Who Sought Online Support Throughout the Covid-19 Pandemic

When the Irish self isolation support group became busy on Facebook throughout the Covid-19 pandemic it attracted over two thousand people who sought support from over 100 other countries. As a result of the group being created and led from Ireland the leaders decided to welcome all people from around the world who were not only seeking positive support within the group but who expressed their views about the happenings throughout the pandemic also. From then the group was renamed the International self isolation support group. Consequently, the group population grew from 3,342 members to 5, 558 members by late 2021. That meant that there were an extra 2,216 members from over 100 different countries outside of Ireland who were researched about their feelings about living through the pandemic. This paper establishes the global feelings of people from all countries other than Ireland who sought online support within the group throughout the covid-19 pandemic. By learning the opinions and feelings of people who sought support from all around the world at this time the researcher was able to discover what global support will be required by people internationally when unpredicted pandemics spread throughout the world. The results of this research within the International self isolation support group showed that people wished to be around more people in real life and wanted to support people during Christmas 2020 when many were alone for Christmas for their first time. It also became clear that people were nervous to be around public houses at times but wanted to have a real-life party at a time when the virus would not be considered harmful to them and others. There was evidence of anxiety and depression and feelings of being dictated to by various governments too.

Exploring mothers' metaphorical sensemaking of dyslexia.

Through a reflexive thematic analysis of a large online support group for dyslexia and a sensemaking lens, this study investigated how mothers made sense of their child's dyslexia through metaphors. Mothers used metaphors to characterise their feelings surrounding dyslexia, their school-based interactions and their identity as advocates. The language mothers use offers a generative, textured way to understand the lived experiences of supporting a child with learning differences. Whilst mothers articulated much frustration and anger, they also voiced encouragement, advice-giving, empathy and hope, illustrating how their sense of agency was both threatened and empowered by the experience of having a child with dyslexia. There is much mothers must process, understand and navigate surrounding their child's dyslexia and the findings underscore the need for early school-based screening, support and intervention.

Social media affordances of LGBTQIA+ expression and community formation

Faced with offline discrimination, LGBTQIA+ users frequently turn to social media to find role models, build social networks and test out new forms of self-expression. Each platform has its own affordances and governance processes which can, in turn, facilitate or impede self-expression and community growth. Through a survey of 120 LGBTQIA+ participants, this paper considers which social media affordances facilitate the creation and development of LGBTQIA+ identities, support online and offline community formation and peer-to-peer learning, whilst limiting opportunities for online abuse. While previous research has so far largely focused on younger LGBTQIA+ users' experiences on SM, we found that broadening our sample to include older participants can lead to novel reflections on platforms' potential and/or challenges towards expressing one’s queerness online. For example, while users young and old found the visibility of other LGBTQIA+ accounts inspiring, entertaining and reassuring, particularly within previously stigmatised expressions of bisexuality, we found that older participants preferred to be selective about their outness, or sometimes to not be out at all, not simply for fear of harassment or context collapse, but also because of historical factors around family and friend relationships or because their identity experimentation had already happened offline. We also identified contrasting views about outness and the use and visibility of pronouns, reminding us that the online LGBTQIA+ community is not a monolith in its beliefs and practices, particularly when different life stages are considered.

Acceptability testing of the Carers-ID intervention to support the mental health of family carers of people with profound and multiple intellectual disabilities.

Providing care and support for a person with intellectual disabilities can be challenging and may negatively impact on family carers' health and wellbeing. A online support programme was co-designed with charitable organisations and family carers, to help meet the mental health and wellbeing needs of family carers. To test the acceptability of a newly developed online support programme for carers of people with profound and multiple intellectual disabilities. A sequential mixed-methods explanatory design was utilised. An adapted version of the Acceptability of Health Apps among Adolescents Scale was distributed to family carers across the United Kingdom and Ireland who had viewed the Carers-ID.com intervention. Participants were then invited to take part in an online interview. Qualitative and quantitative data were analysed separately and then brought together through the triangulation protocol. Seventy family carers (47 female, 23 male) responded to the acceptability survey, with 10 (7 female, 3 male) taking part in interviews. Carers expressed high levels of programme acceptability (mean = 75.43 out of 88). Six themes were generated from interviews with family carers; i) time is precious, ii) the breadth and depth of module content, iii) it was somebody's experience; it was meaningful, iv) won't work for everyone, v) representation: people I could identify with, and vi) module specific suggestions for future changes. Based on our triangulation, four areas of convergence were identified: programme usability and ease, attitudes towards the programme, perceptions of effectiveness, and programme relatability. To be acceptable, online interventions for carers of people with intellectual disability need to be accessible, understandable and easy to use, as carers' free time can be limited. It would be important to investigate the effectiveness of online interventions for family carers, specifically considering which carers the intervention works for, and for whom it may not.

How to create your own space: Montgomery College's Shinta Hernandez is Embracing New Challenges

In even a very short conversation with the new Dean of MC Online and Academic Support at Montgomery College MD, it is immediately clear that Shinta Hernandez isn't the type to consider what she can't do.

How to create your own space: Montgomery College's Shinta Hernandez is embracing new challenges

In even a very short conversation with the new Dean of MC Online and Academic Support at Montgomery College, MD, it is immediately clear that Shinta Hernandez isn’t the type to consider what she can’t do.

Entertainment-oriented Use of ‘Depression’ on Chinese Social Media and Its Impact on Stigmatization of Depression Groups: A Survey Study

This study investigates the impact of entertainment-oriented uses of the term ‘depression’ on public attitudes and stigmatization. Utilizing a quantitative method collecting data from an online survey of 110 Chinese internet users, the research explores how exposure to casual or humorous references to depression correlates with attitudes towards individuals who actually suffer from depression. Key findings reveal that engagement with entertainment-related content is prevalent, particularly among younger demographics. The study shows that frequent exposure to such content increases the likelihood of using similar statements in casual contexts and decreases people’s trust in others’ depression claim. It is strongly correlated with more negative attitudes toward individuals with depression. Moreover, people who worry more about the misleading effects of entertainment-related term use show stronger willingness to offer support to depression patients.The results are guide for public education and policy. It highlights the need to take steps to address the harmful effects portrayed by recreational use of depression on social media. Recommendations include improving the education system, setting online support groups, and restricting time spent on social media.

Losses and support in the grieving process –– pastoral and media context

The loss of a close person is accompanied by various emotional, cognitive, behavioural, physical, spiritual and social reactions. The process of grieving therefore has an impact not only on the course of grief, bereavement itself, and the perception of losses, but also on the human being generally. In accordance with experts, grieving after a loved one who died of the virus that causes COVID-19 is specific. In most cases, it is characterized by a lack of personal contact with a seriously ill person due to infection and quarantine measures during hospitalization, and later a characteristic ban on personal farewells or touching due to the potential threat of infection. In addition, this specifics is accompanied by reflections on how the infection occurred in the first place, or anger at the lost person for not being careful enough, or anger at the health system that provided help to the sick loved one. The paper takes into account the aforementioned as a starting point for the presentation of grief and bereavement, which also takes place in the space of social media during the pandemic. The article seeks to contribute to the overall concept of pastoral bereavement support and contemporary digital support for grief and bereavement. It can be achieved by presenting the possibilities of online support for mourners in the context of the French philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch's (1977) relational model of death. Rabatel and eventually Floréa referred to this issue and started the research on the announcement of death in the media. The goal of such studies was to show that the conventional media focuses on the death of distant people that "doesn’t concern us" (i.e., "third person death"), whereas new technologies give the opportunity and space to talk about the death of close people (i.e., "second person death") as well as one's own death (i.e., "first person death"). The text presents the online space as a place where pastoral care and accompanying the mourners or grieving men is not only possible but also beneficial.

Web-Based Nursing Care Documentation for Students to Support Online Learning

Nursing care is the most critical element in nursing services, which aims to improve the patient’s health status. Ineffective and inefficient care documentation can impact the quality of nursing services. However, the increasingly advanced development of technology provides freedom for the health world to improve the quality of patient-centered services. Educational institutions have also used information technology in learning process activities. As prospective health professionals, students must be equipped with competencies to support their performance. In this study, a web-based nursing care information system was developed to assist students in documenting care activities. The website application was designed to increase student competency in nursing documentation activities to provide high-quality nursing services even though learning is online. The waterfall model approach was used in application design. The design stage started with analyzing application requirements, followed by system design and coding. Next, using a Likert-scale questionnaire, a usability test was performed on 15 beta users to assess the functionality of the application. The results showed that the nursing care website application was easy to use and that students felt satisfied. It is hoped that the website application can be made more attractive by including a decisional support system to make it easier for students to enforce nursing diagnoses on patients.

Real-world predictors of severe psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan: Insights from a large-scale internet-based cohort study.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had negative physical and psychological impacts worldwide. However, there has been a lack of real-world evidence concerning the predictors of severe psychological distress (SPD) among the general population in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this study was to examine predictors of SPD during the COVID-19 pandemic. We investigated the predictors of new-onset SPD in the general Japanese population using data from a large-scale internet-based cohort study. We included 16 489 study participants (age range = 16-81, mean age = 52.7, percentage of male = 50%) in the analysis. Over the course of 1 year from baseline, the estimated proportion of participants who experienced SPD was 5.2% with inverse probability weighting. The predictors of SPD included younger age, being never married, being unemployed, having a higher education background, scoring higher on the Fear of Coronavirus-19 Scale, experiencing more adverse childhood experiences, reporting poorer subjective health status, and COVID-19 with oxygen therapy. Our internet-based survey of the Japanese population may have selection bias, limiting the generalizability to other countries and cultures. This study revealed that being afflicted with COVID-19 requiring oxygen therapy is the most significant predictor of SPD. In addition, we found that vulnerability to social isolation, such as never being unmarried, anxiety toward COVID-19, and susceptibility to stress, are predictors of the emergence of SPD. Therefore, the implementation of online support systems and ensuring access to accurate information may protect against SPD during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan.

Protesting at the intersection of individual characteristics and obstacles to participation: an analysis of the in-person, online and pivoting styles

ABSTRACT Engaging with long-standing debates on the crisis of democracy, manifested as a downturn in civic involvement, this paper scrutinises the evolving landscape of protest participation. First delineating three distinct protest participation styles – in-person, online and what we conceive of as a pivoting style – we identify individual characteristics among protesters that are associated with each style and consider how different obstacles to participation are linked to these individual styles. Using novel survey data from six European countries, we show that online support can be a viable alternative for individuals unable to join protests due to obstacles they face. The online participation style is more common among people who lack connections with social contacts that can facilitate their participation. The in-person style is prevalent among older participants who are less frequent social media users while the pivoting style is more often realised among young, more biographically available people who are media omnivores. Participants who do not embrace the in-person style lack consensus mobilisation whereas those exhibiting a preference for the online or the pivoting styles face obstacles relating to action mobilisation. We conclude the article with a call for a more nuanced understanding of protest participation, as symptomatic of a transformation of democracy.

"Running on goodwill and fairydust" - Midwives' experiences of facilitating and delivering local breastfeeding support via Facebook groups: A qualitative descriptive study.

Facebook groups providing breastfeeding support are widespread. Some are created and/or facilitated by midwives, but little is known about their motivations or experiences. The present study aimed to examine how midwives involved in providing breastfeeding support via local Breastfeeding support Facebook (BSF) groups perceive the value of this provision and their experiences of creating these services and engaging with mothers online. Participants were recruited through Facebook advertising and snowballing techniques. UK registered midwives with experience of providing breastfeeding support via Facebook groups were eligible. Semi-structured interviews were conducted using Microsoft Teams/Zoom with nine midwives between July and September 2021. Reflexive thematic analysis was conducted. Three themes, each with three subthemes, were identified: (1) Imperatives and Value; (2) Goodwill & Lack of Resources; and (3) Community of Practice. Theme 1 described groups as necessary for meeting current mothers' needs and improving low breastfeeding rates. Theme 2 highlighted that BSF groups rely on voluntary work by midwives and peer supporters, with sustainability and recognition of their efforts being major concerns. Theme 3 showed that BSF groups function as communities of practice, offering social learning opportunities and benefits for midwives. Midwives became involved in delivering online support motivated by a belief in the value of this provision, but acted as volunteers and felt unsupported by wider services. This has impacts for the sustainability of this provision regardless of its value. However, midwives reported significant benefits from involvement. Thus, there is a need for services to provide additional guidance and investment.

“Girl Power”‐ing over obstacles: Montgomery College's Shinta Hernandez is embracing new challenges as online Dean

In even a very short conversation with the new Dean of MC Online and Academic Support at Montgomery College MD, it is immediately clear that Shinta Hernandez isn’t the type to consider what she can’t do.

“Girl Power”‐ing over obstacles: Montgomery College's Shinta Hernandez is embracing new challenges as online dean

In even a very short conversation with the new Dean of MC Online and Academic Support at Montgomery College Maryland, it is immediately clear that Shinta Hernandez isn›t the type to consider what she can’t do.

Does Online Social Support Affect the Eating Behaviors of Polish Women with Insulin Resistance?

Insulin resistance, a key factor in developing type 2 diabetes mellitus, is linked to various health conditions. The basis of its treatment is lifestyle modification. However, adherence to nutritional and other medical recommendations can be challenging for chronic disease patients due to many factors, including demographics, social context, gender, age, and the patient's baseline health condition. This study aims to evaluate the impact of online support group members on the diet quality of women with insulin resistance. This study was conducted as an online survey consisting of KomPAN (validated food frequency questionnaire) augmented with questions regarding using professional counseling and membership in support groups. The study covered 1565 women with insulin resistance, 1011 of whom were associated with the online support group. The mean pHDI (pro-health diet index) was 5.18 ± 2.69 in the support groups and 4.86 ± 2.69 in the control group (p = 0.0319. There were no significant differences in the nHDI (non-health diet index). We found that the pHDI is associated with financial situations, the household's situation, occupation education level, and medical or dietitian care, whereas occupation, medical, and dietitian care affect the nHDI. Membership in support groups is related to a higher pHDI and state of self-assessment of nutritional knowledge. Our study indicates a relationship between participation in online support groups and dietary behaviors and the subjective assessment of nutrition knowledge. Future research should focus on elucidating the mechanisms behind these influences and exploring how these communities can be optimized for broader public health initiatives.