People suffering from mental illness seek social media sites like Youtube for support, reveals new study

A recent study has explored that people suffering from severe mental illness like schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder or bipolar disorder seek peer support on popular social media websites like YouTube.

Lead author John Naslund, said that sharing experiences of personal illness could be helpful to others with similar mental health problems. Naslund and his colleagues have found that people suffering with severe mental illness used YouTube to feel less alone, to find hope, to support and defend each other and to share personal stories and strategies for coping with day-to-day challenges and to be able to deal with a great deal of stigma and discrimination.

The researchers used a method called online ethnography to analyse 3,044 comments posted to 19 videos uploaded by individuals who self-identified as having schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder or bipolar disorder. They then used qualitative methods to analyse the comments and find common themes in the data.

The findings had been consistent with how peer support was viewed in mental health research and practice, which suggested that YouTube or other social media websites might help to extend the reach of informal peer support activities between people with severe mental illness.

The report was published in the journal PLOS ONE.