Methods and Applications of Social Media Monitoring of Mental Health During Disasters: Scoping Review

Samantha J Teague; Adrian B R Shatte; Emmelyn Weller; Matthew Fuller-Tyszkiewicz; Delyse M Hutchinson

doi:10.2196/33058

Methods and Applications of Social Media Monitoring of Mental Health During Disasters: Scoping Review

JMIR Ment Health. 2022 Feb 28;9(2):e33058. doi: 10.2196/33058.

Authors

Samantha J Teague^{1

2}, Adrian B R Shatte³, Emmelyn Weller¹, Matthew Fuller-Tyszkiewicz¹, Delyse M Hutchinson^{1

4

5

6

7}

Affiliations

¹ Centre for Social and Early Emotional Development, School of Psychology, Deakin University, Geelong, Australia.
² Division of Tropical Health and Medicine, Department of Psychology, College of Healthcare Sciences, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia.
³ School of Engineering, Information Technology & Physical Sciences, Federation University, Melbourne, Australia.
⁴ Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Melbourne, Australia.
⁵ Centre for Adolescent Health, Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne, Australia.
⁶ Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia.
⁷ National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia.

PMID: 35225815
PMCID: PMC8922153
DOI: 10.2196/33058

Abstract

Background: With the increasing frequency and magnitude of disasters internationally, there is growing research and clinical interest in the application of social media sites for disaster mental health surveillance. However, important questions remain regarding the extent to which unstructured social media data can be harnessed for clinically meaningful decision-making.

Objective: This comprehensive scoping review synthesizes interdisciplinary literature with a particular focus on research methods and applications.

Methods: A total of 6 health and computer science databases were searched for studies published before April 20, 2021, resulting in the identification of 47 studies. Included studies were published in peer-reviewed outlets and examined mental health during disasters or crises by using social media data.

Results: Applications across 31 mental health issues were identified, which were grouped into the following three broader themes: estimating mental health burden, planning or evaluating interventions and policies, and knowledge discovery. Mental health assessments were completed by primarily using lexical dictionaries and human annotations. The analyses included a range of supervised and unsupervised machine learning, statistical modeling, and qualitative techniques. The overall reporting quality was poor, with key details such as the total number of users and data features often not being reported. Further, biases in sample selection and related limitations in generalizability were often overlooked.

Conclusions: The application of social media monitoring has considerable potential for measuring mental health impacts on populations during disasters. Studies have primarily conceptualized mental health in broad terms, such as distress or negative affect, but greater focus is required on validating mental health assessments. There was little evidence for the clinical integration of social media-based disaster mental health monitoring, such as combining surveillance with social media-based interventions or developing and testing real-world disaster management tools. To address issues with study quality, a structured set of reporting guidelines is recommended to improve the methodological quality, replicability, and clinical relevance of future research on the social media monitoring of mental health during disasters.

Keywords: SNS; big data; digital psychiatry; disaster; mental health; social media.

©Samantha J Teague, Adrian B R Shatte, Emmelyn Weller, Matthew Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, Delyse M Hutchinson. Originally published in JMIR Mental Health (https://mental.jmir.org), 28.02.2022.

Publication types

Review