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Mental health discussion
on Twitter in the UK
Research
Beth Granter
January 2014
@brilliantnoise
brilliantnoise.com

© 2014 Brilliant Noise
All rights reserved
Scope of research
We’ve looked at a sample of discussions about mental
health on Twitter in the UK, over the period of one month.
We’ve looked at:
- most discussed topics
- tweets which had the most impact
- organisations / individuals with the most impact
- differences in conversation between genders
- how much people talked about themselves vs others
Key findings
Depression was the most discussed mental health issue followed by
insomnia and anxiety. (Slide 25)
Aside from Christmas, most discussed additional factors were stress,
alcohol and food. (Slide 42)
Schizophrenia was discussed more by men; Anxiety, eating disorders and
panic were discussed more by women. (Slide 68)
Alcohol, autism, dyslexia, bullying, disability, homelessness and race all
discussed more by men. Food, abuse/assault and LGBTQ discussed more
by women. (Slide 69)
@mindcharity was the organisation with the most impact and made
significantly more tweets than any other MH charity account. (Slide 22)
The most popular content was by generic ‘fact’ type accounts. (various)
How charities could use the findings
Charities can be reassured that their focus on depression reflects what people are
talking about most.
They might decide to increase their discussion of issues such as insomnia, which were
discussed more by others than by the charities themselves.
RE gender differences, charities might compare how the rate of discussion reflects or
contradicts statistics of diagnosis, and consider what this means to sufferers.
Other charities might take note of the high volume and impact of tweeting by
@mindcharity, and use this as a benchmark to aim for in their own tweeting strategy.
The popularity of MH facts could influence content strategy.
This study reflects a snapshot in time, where the prevalence of some topics will be driven
by seasonality and/or the news agenda, whilst others will be consistent. Repeating the
study on an ongoing basis could shed more light on these patterns. Charities may want
to consider how easily they can respond to current events to raise the profile of key
issues at optimum times.
Out of scope
Some of the things you asked us to look at, but
which we unfortunately weren’t able to do at this
point include:
- the effect of tweeting on people’s mental health
- what people do after tweeting / reading a tweet
Key words / query
Key words / query = the words which need to be
mentioned in order to appear in our results.
Over 100 key words were included, mostly from this
list on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
List_of_mental_disorders
We also included a list of the Twitter accounts of
major mental health organisations in the UK, to
capture everything they tweeted and any mention of
them.
The full query is in the appendix.
Considerations
Some key words around the topic of mental health are used
quite commonly, and not necessarily whilst discussing them in
the context of a serious mental health issue. e.g. ‘stress’.
- this means that mentions of ‘stress‘ were only brought in
when other terms in the query such as ‘mental health’ were
also mentioned. Similarly ‘bereavement’ was not included
independently.
- autism, asperger’s syndrome and dyslexia were removed as
they are not considered to be mental health conditions (ref.
NHS). These were however discussed by people within
mental health conversations, so are categorised in this
report as related issues.
Results
Our sample covered the following numbers of tweets, all tweeted
between 01 December 2013 and 31 December 2013, by people in the
UK.

We divided the conversations into:

191,250
21,722

people talking about mental health, generally or specifically
people talking to mental health organisations directly
what mental health organisations were saying

Tweets can be in more than one category.

2,576
Topics (free text, uncategorised)
Across mental health conversations, words or phrases which
were most commonly used were:
Christmas
Feelings
Missing someone
causes insomnia
suffering from
depression
Xmas my teachers
gave
suffer from insomnia
Topics (free text, uncategorised)
Words and phrases mentioned the most, to
and from mental health organisations
To mental health
organisations

Xmas

From mental health
organisations

Christmas / Xmas

People with mental health Watch / read
1 in 4

New Year

Great

Young people

Retweet

Emotional support

Read

NIMHchats
Top links (mental health)
Links which were tweeted the most overall:

Horoscope site mentioning paranoia
Horoscope site mentioning anxiety
MP John Woodcock blogs about depression
Depression animation on Upworthy
Top 6 tips to beat depression article
10 symptoms of depression article
Christmas social anxiety BBC article
Advert for Frankincense to treat depression
and anxiety
Depression animation on Upworthy
Photo tweeted by Frankie Boyle
Top hashtags and most mentioned tweeter
Hashtags and accounts mentioned the
most, in general mental health discussion,
and to and from MH organisations
Mental health

To mental health
organisations

From mental health
organisations
Impact tweets and
authors
Tweets with most impact overall
Aside from tweets by @Fact, the top tweets were about the
Mandela memorial service sign language interpreter having
schizophrenia.

http://twitter.com/BBCBreaking/statuses/411027460214779904
https://twitter.com/piersmorgan/statuses/411101780496248832
Tweets with most impact overall
Next top tweets were both by Stephen Fry asking for support
for Mind:

http://twitter.com/stephenfry/statuses/414697033199411202
http://twitter.com/stephenfry/statuses/414390661279145984
Individual authors with most impact overall
Although
filtered to
exclude Twitter
accounts
recognised as
‘organisational’,
all of the top
authors except
@Lesism,
@fruitbatwalton
and
@Sectioned_
only retweeted
@Fact, so are
likely to be
automated, not
individuals).
Individual authors with most impact overall
Individual authors with most impact overall
Non-individuals with most impact overall
Tweets with the most impact mentioning
‘mental health’

http://twitter.com/stephenfry/statuses/414697033199411202
http://twitter.com/stephenfry/statuses/413000714311307264

http://twitter.com/caitlinmoran/statuses/411043726765862913
http://twitter.com/Fact/statuses/413504599509581824
More tweets with high impact mentioning
‘mental health’
Tweets with the most impact by mental
health organisations
Mental health organisations with most
impact overall
Left to right in order of total combined impact; height of bar
represents volume of tweets. e.g. TimetoChange published fewer
tweets than @MindFullUK, but the former had more impact
Topics grouped by issue
and additional factors
Due to the variety of ways people
talk about mental health issues,
conversations were categorised
by type of mental health issue
(e.g. depression) and by other
topics discussed in relation to
mental health (e.g. money).
Note - mentions can be in more
than one category.
Topics grouped by
issue
76,237
28,537
25,261
8,432
5,507
5,496
3,976
3,902
22,595
34,156

Depression
Insomnia
Anxiety
OCD
Bipolar
Schizophrenia
Panic
Eating disorders
Mental health (general)
Uncategorised
Topics (grouped by issue & query)
Mental health discussion

74,545
28,530
24,960
19,171
8,391
5,340
5,212
3,932
3,807
16,735

Depression
Insomnia
Anxiety
Mental health
OCD
Bipolar
Schizophrenia
Panic
Eating disorders
Uncategorised

To mental health organisations

3221
1,552
267
261
154
90
41
39
7
16,027

Mental health
203
Depression
140
Schizophrenia
40
Anxiety
17
Bipolar
13
Eating disorders
5
Panic
3
OCD
2
Insomnia
0
Uncategorised 2,142

From mental health
organisations

Mental health
Depression
Anxiety
Schizophrenia
Bipolar
Eating disorders
Panic
OCD
Insomnia
Uncategorised

Schizophrenia and anxiety discussed in similar volumes TO mental health orgs, but anxiety
discussed twice as much as schizophrenia BY the orgs. Insomnia and OCD discussed in high
volume in general, but in low volume to or by mental health organisations. Eating disorders and
Schizophrenia discussed less than other major MH issues in general, but discussed more to and
by MH organisations. Most of the conversations to and from MH organisations were not about
these specific MH issues, but more varied.
Topics (grouped by issue)

}
}
Depression
Depression
Depression was overwhelmingly the most common
term. Where mental health organisations were not
included, a lot of people were using the term quite
casually, and likely not intending to discuss it as a
serious mental health condition. e.g. “I’m depressed
that...” was often used as a general term to denote
something someone didn’t like, as an alternative to
saying ‘sad’ or ‘unhappy’.
Mood swings, cancer and a story about
@JWoodCockMP having depression were discussed.
Discussion about depression
Tweets with most impact about depression
The top 99 tweets by impact score were all by @Fact,
an account followed by over half a million people,
tweeting facts such as:

All of which received a large number of retweets.
@FactsInYourFace tweeted a large number of similar high reaching
tweets.

https://twitter.com/Fact/statuses/417497286009028608
Tweets with most impact about depression
Aside from @Facts or @FactsInYourFace, top tweets
about depression were:

http://twitter.com/guardian/statuses/408510649804009472
http://twitter.com/OwenJones84/statuses/408535972641382400
Insomnia
Insomnia
Insomnia was another very common term, but not when
people were talking to mental health organisations. It was
commonly used by people to simply describe the fact that
they couldn’t get to sleep that night, right then, rather than
discussing an ongoing mental health problem.
The fact that people describe this symptom regularly but
don’t discuss it with mental health organisations is interesting.
Do they use the term too lightly, or not take it seriously, or not
consider it a MH issue?
Discussion about insomnia
Tweets with the most impact about insomnia
As with depression, the top tweets by impact score were also all by
@Fact and @FactsInYourFace. After this, top tweets were:

http://twitter.com/TimzyHasAnEgo/statuses/408117231420461056
http://twitter.com/carakilbey/statuses/408027797685559296
Anxiety
Anxiety
Anxiety was a very common term, and in most cases
people seemed to be using it to talk seriously about
their own experiences of anxiety.
Depression and panic attacks were discussed
alongside anxiety, as well as eating disorders.
That said, the most retweeted tweet about anxiety was
a Christmas poem about homework.
Discussion about anxiety
Many of these terms were driven by the retweeting of
one poem about homework.
Tweets with the most impact about anxiety
As with depression and insomnia, the top tweets by impact score
were also all by @Fact and @FactsInYourFace. After this, top tweets
were:

http://twitter.com/BBCNews/statuses/413587314297028608
http://twitter.com/TheTumblrPosts/statuses/410179462861316096
Mental health specifically mentioned
Topics grouped by additional factor
These additional factors are not mental health issues, but we were interested in how much these factors were discussed
alongside mental health discussion.

*did not include mentions of ‘gay’ due to high volume of homophobic use of the word as an insult. Likewise discussions of
race are likely to be higher than reported here due to complexity of terms in conversation.
Topics (grouped by additional factor)
These additional factors are not mental health issues, but we were interested in how much these factors were discussed
alongside mental health discussion.

NB ‘alcohol
abuse’ and
‘alcoholism’
were included
in main query

(Christmas excluded)
(Christmas excluded)
Topics (grouped by additional factor)
Mental health

9,922
5,471
3,752
2,068
1,615
689
675
600
491
274
259
172
173,550

Christmas
Stress
Alcohol
Food
Money
Abuse/assault
Autism
Disability
Bullying
LGBTQ
Homelessness
Race
Uncategorised

To mental health
organisations

2,945
366
347
191
182
114
65
60
50
35
22
6
20,284

Christmas
Money
Stress
Food
Autism
Disability
LGBTQ
Bullying
Alcohol
Homelessness
Abuse/assault
Race
Uncategorised

From mental health
organisations

445
61
46
44
16
14
10
7
6
5
3
1
2,363

Christmas
Food
Money
Stress
Disability
Alcohol
LGBTQ
Homelessness
Autism
Bullying
Abuse/assault
Race
Uncategorised

Alcohol/abuse/assault and MH discussed more in general than directly to MH orgs. LGBTQ/money and MH discussed more directly to MH orgs
(relatively). Autism discussed more to MH orgs than by MH orgs. Alcohol discussed more by MH orgs than to MH orgs.
Christmas
Christmas
Due to the report covering December, Christmas was
the most common term. Lots of people talked about
feeling depressed and anxious at Christmas.
In particular social anxiety and depression were
discussed.
The most retweeted tweet was the same light hearted
Christmas poem about homework causing anxiety,
which drove most of the key terms around Christmas.
Discussions about Christmas and mental
health
Many of these terms are driven by retweets of the one
homework related poem.
Discussions about Christmas and mental
health
The top tweets about Christmas included the same two top tweets
about anxiety. After those, top tweets were:

http://twitter.com/NHSChoices/statuses/417636775805210624
http://twitter.com/StanCollymore/statuses/413628066720935936
Stress
Stress
Stress was often discussed alongside depression and
anxiety.
Approximately a third of mental health discussions
which mentioned stress were from ‘fact’ type accounts,
or retweets of their tweets.
Discussion about stress
Tweets with the most impact about stress
As with depression and insomnia, the top tweets by impact score
were also all by @Fact and @FactsInYourFace. After ‘fact’ accounts,
top tweets were:

http://twitter.com/MindCharity/statuses/410441393497448448
http://twitter.com/MindCharity/statuses/410362053384478720
Alcohol
Alcohol
Discussions mentioning alcohol abuse and alcoholism were mainly
serious, with a lot of discussion about a news story that charities expect
an increase in alcohol abuse.
Domestic abuse and substance misuse also were discussed alongside
alcohol.
There were however quite a few sarcastic comments about Christmas
drinking which used terms such as ‘alcoholic’ as a joke.
There were significantly more discussions of alcohol abuse from the
audience than to or from mental health organisations.
Note that discussions of alcoholism were included in the research
without the need to mention additional mental health issues.
Discussions about alcohol and mental health
Tweets with the most impact about alcohol
and mental health
The top tweet was another from @Fact, after which:

http://twitter.com/alaindebotton/statuses/413297126840340482
http://twitter.com/guardian/statuses/411714872317980672
Food
Food and mental health
Most of the tweets about food and mental health
were retweets of ‘fact’ account tweets.
Many of the tweets were about types of food
which improved mental health conditions such as
depression e.g. bananas.
Also some commentary around people eating
more when they are depressed.
Discussions about food and mental health
Tweets with the most impact about food and
mental health
The top tweets were more from ‘fact’ accounts, after which:

http://twitter.com/hexachordal/statuses/413768624596209664
http://twitter.com/laurenofthesea/statuses/415844414486216704
Money
Money
Discussions about money when not directed to or from
a mental health organisation were commonly about
wanting the Government to spend more money on
mental health services.
When in relation to a mental health organisation,
discussions around money were usually about
fundraising or donating to the charity.
Discussions about money and mental health
Tweets with the most impact about money
and mental health
(Discussion of ‘poverty’ was categorised as ‘money’)

http://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/statuses/414058930449698816
http://twitter.com/FactsInYourFace/statuses/414359704367030273
Gender
Gender considerations
Gender is applied based on the assumed gender of a person’s
name.
Where gender is not obvious from the name, the mention is not
assigned as any gender.
This means it’s possible that more mentions might be
categorised as male or female depending on how obviously
gendered the names are. e.g. ten mentions by ‘Alex’ and three
mentions by ‘Sophie’ would show as 100% female, even if the
Alex mentions were in fact all male.
As such, these results should be treated with caution. What is
interesting though, is how different issues vary - that difference
is unlikely to be due to how gendered the names are, so more
likely to show real gender differences in discussion around a
topic.
Gender overall
Gender per issue

Schizophrenia was discussed more by men; could this have been driven by the news agenda at the
time? (The Mandela interpreter story)
Anxiety, eating disorders and panic in particular were discussed more by women, but all other topics
and overall discussion was by more women than men.
Do these correlate with the different experiences or diagnoses of men/women with different mental
health issues?
Gender per other topic discussed in relation
to mental health
All

Autism, race, alcohol, homelessness, bullying all discussed more by
men. Food, LGBTQ, abuse/assault, money, stress all discussed more by
women. Note logarithmic scale.
Gender and discussion of self or other
All
We looked at whether people talked about themselves or others the
most when talking about mental health. Comments such as ‘I am’ or ‘I
feel’ were categorised as ‘self’ and comments such as ‘she is’, ‘he is’,
‘you are’ were categorised as ‘other’.

All

All discussions were more
likely to come from women,
but discussions of ‘self’ were
particularly more likely to
come from women than
men.
Do women find it easier to
disclose their own
experiences/feelings?
Gender and original tweets vs retweets
All
We looked at whether people created original tweets, or retweeted
other people’s. Of all the tweets we analysed, 60% were original
tweets and 40% were retweets. Whilst women tweeted and retweeted
more than men, both tweeted or retweeted at similar proportions.

All
Demographics
(beta)
Demographics (beta) considerations
This data is based on key words in biographies, and is in
‘beta’ mode in Brandwatch at the moment.
As such should be treated with caution.
Mental health organisation tweets have been removed.
This data would be more useful when compared to general
Twitter demographics.
Demographics (beta) professions
Professions across all mental health conversations:
Demographics (beta) interests
Interests across all mental health conversations:
Query
Query considerations
Keywords were sourced from this page on Wikipedia: http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mental_disorders
Some words in the list were removed as they were
highlighted by professionals as not being mental health
issues e.g. Alzheimer’s.
However, it is likely that some other words remaining in the
query are not professionally considered to be mental health
issues. As we are not mental health professionals, we have,
where not advised otherwise, kept the large list from the
Wikipedia page, rather than risk making incorrect
judgements of our own.
The report could be improved through partnership with a
mental health organisation to validate the search terms.
Appendix: mental health query
site:"twitter.com" AND
country:uk AND
("mental health" OR
"Adjustment disorder" OR
((Adolescent OR adult OR childhood) NEAR/5
"antisocial behavior") OR
"cognitive decline" OR
Agoraphobia OR
((Alcohol OR Barbiturate OR Benzodiazepine
OR cannabis OR cocaine) NEAR/20
(abuse OR dependence OR withdrawal OR
misuse OR addiction)) OR
alcoholism OR
"Amnestic disorder" OR
"Amphetamine dependence" OR
"Amphetamine withdrawal psychosis" OR
Anorexia OR
amnesia OR
"personality disorder" OR
Anxiety OR
"Anxiolytic-related" OR
"Attention deficit" OR
(raw:ADD AND (attention OR deficit)) OR
hyperactivity OR
Autophagia OR
Bibliomania OR
"eating disorder" OR
Bipolar OR
"Body dysmorphic" OR
"Borderline intellectual functioning" OR
"Borderline personality" OR
psychotic OR

Bulimia OR
"Caffeine-related disorder" OR
Claustrophobia OR
"Catatonic disorder" OR
schizophrenia OR
"sleep disorder" OR
"Cognitive disorder" OR
"Communication disorder" OR
"Conduct disorder" OR
"Cotard delusion" OR
Cyclothymia OR
"Delirium tremens" OR
"Depersonalization disorder" OR
"Depressive disorder" OR
Depression OR depressed OR
"Derealization disorder" OR
Desynchronosis OR
"Developmental coordination disorder" OR
"Diogenes Syndrome" OR
Dispareunia OR
"Dissociative identity disorder" OR
Dysthymia OR
EDNOS OR
Encopresis OR
"Ekbom's Syndrome" OR
"Delusional Parasitosis" OR
Enuresis OR
Erotomania OR
Exhibitionism OR
"Factitious disorder" OR
"Fregoli delusion" OR
Frotteurism OR
"Fugue State" OR
"Ganser syndrome" OR
"General adaptation syndrome" OR
"Grandiose delusions" OR
"Hallucinogen-related disorder" OR
"Hallucinogen persisting perception" OR
"Histrionic personality" OR
"Hypomanic episode" OR
Hypochondriasis OR
Hypochondria OR
"Impulse control disorder" OR
"Inhalant abuse" OR
Insomnia OR

"Intellectual disability" OR
"Intermittent explosive disorder"
Kleptomania OR
"Korsakoff's syndrome" OR
"Lacunar amnesia" OR
"Male erectile disorder" OR
Malingering OR
"Manic episode" OR
"Mathematics disorder" OR
"Medication-related disorder" OR
Melancholia OR
Misophonia OR
"Mood disorder" OR
"Mood episode" OR
"Morbid jealousy" OR
"Munchausen's syndrome" OR
Narcissistic OR
"Neglect of child" OR
"Neuroleptic-related disorder" OR
"Nicotine withdrawal" OR
"Night eating syndrome" OR
"Nightmare disorder" OR
"Obsessive-compulsive" OR OCD OR
Oneirophrenia OR
"Opioid dependence" OR
"Opioid-related disorder" OR
"Oppositional defiant disorder" OR
"Pain disorder" OR
"Panic disorder" OR "panic attack" OR
(Paranoia NOT (game OR playing)) OR
Parasomnia OR
"Parkinson's Disease" OR
"Partner relational problem" OR
"Pathological gambling" OR
Perfectionism OR
"Persecutory delusion" OR
"Pervasive developmental disorder" OR
PDD OR
Phencyclidine OR
"Phobic disorder" OR
"Phonological disorder" OR
"Physical abuse" OR
Pica OR
"Polysubstance-related disorder" OR

"Post-traumatic embitterment" OR
PTED OR
"Posttraumatic stress" OR
PTSD OR
"Primary hypersomnia" OR
"Primary insomnia" OR
"Psychological factor" OR
Psychotic OR
Pyromania OR
"Reactive attachment" OR
"Reading disorder" OR
"Recurrent brief depression" OR
"Relational disorder" OR
senile OR senility OR
schizophrenia OR
"Rett's disorder" OR
"Rumination syndrome" OR
Schizoaffective OR
Schizoid OR
Schizophrenia OR
Schizophreniform OR
Schizotypal OR
"Seasonal affective disorder" OR
((Sedative OR hypnotic OR
anxiolytic)
NEAR/10 "related disorder") OR
"Selective mutism" OR
"Severe mental retardation" OR
"Sleep disorder" OR
"Sleep terror" OR
Sleepwalking OR
"Social phobia" OR
Somatization OR
Somatoform OR
"Specific phobia" OR
"Stendhal syndrome" OR
"Stereotypic movement disorder" OR
Stuttering OR
"Substance-related disorder" OR
"Tardive dyskinesia" OR
Tourette OR
Tourettes OR
Trichotillomania)
Appendix: to or by mental health orgs query
site:"twitter.com"
AND (
author: (
timetotalk OR
mindcharity OR
timetochange OR
youngmindsuk OR
rethink_
depressionall OR
starwards OR
charitysane OR
nsunnews OR
mindfulluk OR
beated OR
micprisons OR
bwdmind OR
ls_mind OR
bristolmind OR
cardiff_mind OR
ulverstonmind OR
andovermind OR
mmic_ OR
manchestermind OR
leedsmind OR
mindwestsussex OR
kaleidoscope_pg OR
nottsmind OR
sunderlandmind OR
mindincroydon OR
mborostcktnmind OR
pfmind OR
yaspproject OR
suffolkmind OR
hf_mind OR
midessexmind OR
tynesidemind OR
rb_mind OR
washingtonmind OR
flintshiremind OR
welmind1 OR
mindbrighton OR
lancsmind OR
inworksupport OR

mindinharingey OR
stockportmind OR
mindincambs OR
togmind OR
rochdalemind OR
mindinenfield OR
telfordmind OR
jemfmurphy OR
voicecollective OR
shorpshiremind OR
wboroughmind OR
westleicsmind OR
mattsolentmind OR
colchestermind OR
southendmind OR
theyorkmind OR
minortranx OR
restormelmind OR
mindhey OR
matvmind OR
west_essex_mind OR
oxfordshiremind OR
chmind OR
swanseamind OR
emergenceplus OR
mental_healthy OR
endthestigma OR
mhf_tweets OR
ontheborderline OR
nimhgov OR
mentalhealth_uk OR
togetheruk OR
anxietyuk OR
rcpsych) OR
timetotalk OR
mindcharity OR
timetochange OR
youngmindsuk OR
raw:@rethink_ OR raw:@ReThink_ OR
raw:@Rethink_ OR
depressionall OR
starwards OR
charitysane OR
nsunnews OR

mindfulluk OR
(raw:@beatED OR raw:@beated OR
raw:@BEATED OR raw:@Beated) OR
micprisons OR
bwdmind OR
ls_mind OR
bristolmind OR
cardiff_mind OR
ulverstonmind OR
andovermind OR
mmic_ OR
manchestermind OR
leedsmind OR
mindwestsussex OR
kaleidoscope_pg OR
nottsmind OR
sunderlandmind OR
mindincroydon OR
mborostcktnmind OR
pfmind OR
yaspproject OR
suffolkmind OR
hf_mind OR
midessexmind OR
tynesidemind OR
rb_mind OR
washingtonmind OR
flintshiremind OR
welmind1 OR
mindbrighton OR
lancsmind OR
inworksupport OR
mindinharingey OR
stockportmind OR
mindincambs OR
togmind OR
rochdalemind OR
mindinenfield OR
telfordmind OR
jemfmurphy OR
voicecollective OR
shorpshiremind OR
wboroughmind OR
westleicsmind OR
mattsolentmind OR

colchestermind OR
southendmind OR
theyorkmind OR
minortranx OR
restormelmind OR
mindhey OR
matvmind OR
west_essex_mind OR
oxfordshiremind OR
chmind OR
swanseamind OR
emergenceplus OR
mental_healthy OR
endthestigma OR
mhf_tweets OR
ontheborderline OR
nimhgov OR
mentalhealth_uk OR
togetheruk OR
anxietyuk OR
rcpsych)

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Mental health discussion on Twitter in the UK

  • 1. Mental health discussion on Twitter in the UK Research Beth Granter January 2014 @brilliantnoise brilliantnoise.com © 2014 Brilliant Noise All rights reserved
  • 2. Scope of research We’ve looked at a sample of discussions about mental health on Twitter in the UK, over the period of one month. We’ve looked at: - most discussed topics - tweets which had the most impact - organisations / individuals with the most impact - differences in conversation between genders - how much people talked about themselves vs others
  • 3. Key findings Depression was the most discussed mental health issue followed by insomnia and anxiety. (Slide 25) Aside from Christmas, most discussed additional factors were stress, alcohol and food. (Slide 42) Schizophrenia was discussed more by men; Anxiety, eating disorders and panic were discussed more by women. (Slide 68) Alcohol, autism, dyslexia, bullying, disability, homelessness and race all discussed more by men. Food, abuse/assault and LGBTQ discussed more by women. (Slide 69) @mindcharity was the organisation with the most impact and made significantly more tweets than any other MH charity account. (Slide 22) The most popular content was by generic ‘fact’ type accounts. (various)
  • 4. How charities could use the findings Charities can be reassured that their focus on depression reflects what people are talking about most. They might decide to increase their discussion of issues such as insomnia, which were discussed more by others than by the charities themselves. RE gender differences, charities might compare how the rate of discussion reflects or contradicts statistics of diagnosis, and consider what this means to sufferers. Other charities might take note of the high volume and impact of tweeting by @mindcharity, and use this as a benchmark to aim for in their own tweeting strategy. The popularity of MH facts could influence content strategy. This study reflects a snapshot in time, where the prevalence of some topics will be driven by seasonality and/or the news agenda, whilst others will be consistent. Repeating the study on an ongoing basis could shed more light on these patterns. Charities may want to consider how easily they can respond to current events to raise the profile of key issues at optimum times.
  • 5. Out of scope Some of the things you asked us to look at, but which we unfortunately weren’t able to do at this point include: - the effect of tweeting on people’s mental health - what people do after tweeting / reading a tweet
  • 6. Key words / query Key words / query = the words which need to be mentioned in order to appear in our results. Over 100 key words were included, mostly from this list on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ List_of_mental_disorders We also included a list of the Twitter accounts of major mental health organisations in the UK, to capture everything they tweeted and any mention of them. The full query is in the appendix.
  • 7. Considerations Some key words around the topic of mental health are used quite commonly, and not necessarily whilst discussing them in the context of a serious mental health issue. e.g. ‘stress’. - this means that mentions of ‘stress‘ were only brought in when other terms in the query such as ‘mental health’ were also mentioned. Similarly ‘bereavement’ was not included independently. - autism, asperger’s syndrome and dyslexia were removed as they are not considered to be mental health conditions (ref. NHS). These were however discussed by people within mental health conversations, so are categorised in this report as related issues.
  • 8. Results Our sample covered the following numbers of tweets, all tweeted between 01 December 2013 and 31 December 2013, by people in the UK. We divided the conversations into: 191,250 21,722 people talking about mental health, generally or specifically people talking to mental health organisations directly what mental health organisations were saying Tweets can be in more than one category. 2,576
  • 9. Topics (free text, uncategorised) Across mental health conversations, words or phrases which were most commonly used were: Christmas Feelings Missing someone causes insomnia suffering from depression Xmas my teachers gave suffer from insomnia
  • 10. Topics (free text, uncategorised) Words and phrases mentioned the most, to and from mental health organisations To mental health organisations Xmas From mental health organisations Christmas / Xmas People with mental health Watch / read 1 in 4 New Year Great Young people Retweet Emotional support Read NIMHchats
  • 11. Top links (mental health) Links which were tweeted the most overall: Horoscope site mentioning paranoia Horoscope site mentioning anxiety MP John Woodcock blogs about depression Depression animation on Upworthy Top 6 tips to beat depression article 10 symptoms of depression article Christmas social anxiety BBC article Advert for Frankincense to treat depression and anxiety Depression animation on Upworthy Photo tweeted by Frankie Boyle
  • 12. Top hashtags and most mentioned tweeter Hashtags and accounts mentioned the most, in general mental health discussion, and to and from MH organisations Mental health To mental health organisations From mental health organisations
  • 14. Tweets with most impact overall Aside from tweets by @Fact, the top tweets were about the Mandela memorial service sign language interpreter having schizophrenia. http://twitter.com/BBCBreaking/statuses/411027460214779904 https://twitter.com/piersmorgan/statuses/411101780496248832
  • 15. Tweets with most impact overall Next top tweets were both by Stephen Fry asking for support for Mind: http://twitter.com/stephenfry/statuses/414697033199411202 http://twitter.com/stephenfry/statuses/414390661279145984
  • 16. Individual authors with most impact overall Although filtered to exclude Twitter accounts recognised as ‘organisational’, all of the top authors except @Lesism, @fruitbatwalton and @Sectioned_ only retweeted @Fact, so are likely to be automated, not individuals).
  • 17. Individual authors with most impact overall
  • 18. Individual authors with most impact overall
  • 19. Non-individuals with most impact overall
  • 20. Tweets with the most impact mentioning ‘mental health’ http://twitter.com/stephenfry/statuses/414697033199411202 http://twitter.com/stephenfry/statuses/413000714311307264 http://twitter.com/caitlinmoran/statuses/411043726765862913 http://twitter.com/Fact/statuses/413504599509581824
  • 21. More tweets with high impact mentioning ‘mental health’
  • 22. Tweets with the most impact by mental health organisations
  • 23. Mental health organisations with most impact overall Left to right in order of total combined impact; height of bar represents volume of tweets. e.g. TimetoChange published fewer tweets than @MindFullUK, but the former had more impact
  • 24. Topics grouped by issue and additional factors Due to the variety of ways people talk about mental health issues, conversations were categorised by type of mental health issue (e.g. depression) and by other topics discussed in relation to mental health (e.g. money). Note - mentions can be in more than one category.
  • 26. Topics (grouped by issue & query) Mental health discussion 74,545 28,530 24,960 19,171 8,391 5,340 5,212 3,932 3,807 16,735 Depression Insomnia Anxiety Mental health OCD Bipolar Schizophrenia Panic Eating disorders Uncategorised To mental health organisations 3221 1,552 267 261 154 90 41 39 7 16,027 Mental health 203 Depression 140 Schizophrenia 40 Anxiety 17 Bipolar 13 Eating disorders 5 Panic 3 OCD 2 Insomnia 0 Uncategorised 2,142 From mental health organisations Mental health Depression Anxiety Schizophrenia Bipolar Eating disorders Panic OCD Insomnia Uncategorised Schizophrenia and anxiety discussed in similar volumes TO mental health orgs, but anxiety discussed twice as much as schizophrenia BY the orgs. Insomnia and OCD discussed in high volume in general, but in low volume to or by mental health organisations. Eating disorders and Schizophrenia discussed less than other major MH issues in general, but discussed more to and by MH organisations. Most of the conversations to and from MH organisations were not about these specific MH issues, but more varied.
  • 27. Topics (grouped by issue) } }
  • 29. Depression Depression was overwhelmingly the most common term. Where mental health organisations were not included, a lot of people were using the term quite casually, and likely not intending to discuss it as a serious mental health condition. e.g. “I’m depressed that...” was often used as a general term to denote something someone didn’t like, as an alternative to saying ‘sad’ or ‘unhappy’. Mood swings, cancer and a story about @JWoodCockMP having depression were discussed.
  • 31. Tweets with most impact about depression The top 99 tweets by impact score were all by @Fact, an account followed by over half a million people, tweeting facts such as: All of which received a large number of retweets. @FactsInYourFace tweeted a large number of similar high reaching tweets. https://twitter.com/Fact/statuses/417497286009028608
  • 32. Tweets with most impact about depression Aside from @Facts or @FactsInYourFace, top tweets about depression were: http://twitter.com/guardian/statuses/408510649804009472 http://twitter.com/OwenJones84/statuses/408535972641382400
  • 34. Insomnia Insomnia was another very common term, but not when people were talking to mental health organisations. It was commonly used by people to simply describe the fact that they couldn’t get to sleep that night, right then, rather than discussing an ongoing mental health problem. The fact that people describe this symptom regularly but don’t discuss it with mental health organisations is interesting. Do they use the term too lightly, or not take it seriously, or not consider it a MH issue?
  • 36. Tweets with the most impact about insomnia As with depression, the top tweets by impact score were also all by @Fact and @FactsInYourFace. After this, top tweets were: http://twitter.com/TimzyHasAnEgo/statuses/408117231420461056 http://twitter.com/carakilbey/statuses/408027797685559296
  • 38. Anxiety Anxiety was a very common term, and in most cases people seemed to be using it to talk seriously about their own experiences of anxiety. Depression and panic attacks were discussed alongside anxiety, as well as eating disorders. That said, the most retweeted tweet about anxiety was a Christmas poem about homework.
  • 39. Discussion about anxiety Many of these terms were driven by the retweeting of one poem about homework.
  • 40. Tweets with the most impact about anxiety As with depression and insomnia, the top tweets by impact score were also all by @Fact and @FactsInYourFace. After this, top tweets were: http://twitter.com/BBCNews/statuses/413587314297028608 http://twitter.com/TheTumblrPosts/statuses/410179462861316096
  • 42. Topics grouped by additional factor These additional factors are not mental health issues, but we were interested in how much these factors were discussed alongside mental health discussion. *did not include mentions of ‘gay’ due to high volume of homophobic use of the word as an insult. Likewise discussions of race are likely to be higher than reported here due to complexity of terms in conversation.
  • 43. Topics (grouped by additional factor) These additional factors are not mental health issues, but we were interested in how much these factors were discussed alongside mental health discussion. NB ‘alcohol abuse’ and ‘alcoholism’ were included in main query (Christmas excluded) (Christmas excluded)
  • 44. Topics (grouped by additional factor) Mental health 9,922 5,471 3,752 2,068 1,615 689 675 600 491 274 259 172 173,550 Christmas Stress Alcohol Food Money Abuse/assault Autism Disability Bullying LGBTQ Homelessness Race Uncategorised To mental health organisations 2,945 366 347 191 182 114 65 60 50 35 22 6 20,284 Christmas Money Stress Food Autism Disability LGBTQ Bullying Alcohol Homelessness Abuse/assault Race Uncategorised From mental health organisations 445 61 46 44 16 14 10 7 6 5 3 1 2,363 Christmas Food Money Stress Disability Alcohol LGBTQ Homelessness Autism Bullying Abuse/assault Race Uncategorised Alcohol/abuse/assault and MH discussed more in general than directly to MH orgs. LGBTQ/money and MH discussed more directly to MH orgs (relatively). Autism discussed more to MH orgs than by MH orgs. Alcohol discussed more by MH orgs than to MH orgs.
  • 46. Christmas Due to the report covering December, Christmas was the most common term. Lots of people talked about feeling depressed and anxious at Christmas. In particular social anxiety and depression were discussed. The most retweeted tweet was the same light hearted Christmas poem about homework causing anxiety, which drove most of the key terms around Christmas.
  • 47. Discussions about Christmas and mental health Many of these terms are driven by retweets of the one homework related poem.
  • 48. Discussions about Christmas and mental health The top tweets about Christmas included the same two top tweets about anxiety. After those, top tweets were: http://twitter.com/NHSChoices/statuses/417636775805210624 http://twitter.com/StanCollymore/statuses/413628066720935936
  • 50. Stress Stress was often discussed alongside depression and anxiety. Approximately a third of mental health discussions which mentioned stress were from ‘fact’ type accounts, or retweets of their tweets.
  • 52. Tweets with the most impact about stress As with depression and insomnia, the top tweets by impact score were also all by @Fact and @FactsInYourFace. After ‘fact’ accounts, top tweets were: http://twitter.com/MindCharity/statuses/410441393497448448 http://twitter.com/MindCharity/statuses/410362053384478720
  • 54. Alcohol Discussions mentioning alcohol abuse and alcoholism were mainly serious, with a lot of discussion about a news story that charities expect an increase in alcohol abuse. Domestic abuse and substance misuse also were discussed alongside alcohol. There were however quite a few sarcastic comments about Christmas drinking which used terms such as ‘alcoholic’ as a joke. There were significantly more discussions of alcohol abuse from the audience than to or from mental health organisations. Note that discussions of alcoholism were included in the research without the need to mention additional mental health issues.
  • 55. Discussions about alcohol and mental health
  • 56. Tweets with the most impact about alcohol and mental health The top tweet was another from @Fact, after which: http://twitter.com/alaindebotton/statuses/413297126840340482 http://twitter.com/guardian/statuses/411714872317980672
  • 57. Food
  • 58. Food and mental health Most of the tweets about food and mental health were retweets of ‘fact’ account tweets. Many of the tweets were about types of food which improved mental health conditions such as depression e.g. bananas. Also some commentary around people eating more when they are depressed.
  • 59. Discussions about food and mental health
  • 60. Tweets with the most impact about food and mental health The top tweets were more from ‘fact’ accounts, after which: http://twitter.com/hexachordal/statuses/413768624596209664 http://twitter.com/laurenofthesea/statuses/415844414486216704
  • 61. Money
  • 62. Money Discussions about money when not directed to or from a mental health organisation were commonly about wanting the Government to spend more money on mental health services. When in relation to a mental health organisation, discussions around money were usually about fundraising or donating to the charity.
  • 63. Discussions about money and mental health
  • 64. Tweets with the most impact about money and mental health (Discussion of ‘poverty’ was categorised as ‘money’) http://twitter.com/sturdyAlex/statuses/414058930449698816 http://twitter.com/FactsInYourFace/statuses/414359704367030273
  • 66. Gender considerations Gender is applied based on the assumed gender of a person’s name. Where gender is not obvious from the name, the mention is not assigned as any gender. This means it’s possible that more mentions might be categorised as male or female depending on how obviously gendered the names are. e.g. ten mentions by ‘Alex’ and three mentions by ‘Sophie’ would show as 100% female, even if the Alex mentions were in fact all male. As such, these results should be treated with caution. What is interesting though, is how different issues vary - that difference is unlikely to be due to how gendered the names are, so more likely to show real gender differences in discussion around a topic.
  • 68. Gender per issue Schizophrenia was discussed more by men; could this have been driven by the news agenda at the time? (The Mandela interpreter story) Anxiety, eating disorders and panic in particular were discussed more by women, but all other topics and overall discussion was by more women than men. Do these correlate with the different experiences or diagnoses of men/women with different mental health issues?
  • 69. Gender per other topic discussed in relation to mental health All Autism, race, alcohol, homelessness, bullying all discussed more by men. Food, LGBTQ, abuse/assault, money, stress all discussed more by women. Note logarithmic scale.
  • 70. Gender and discussion of self or other All We looked at whether people talked about themselves or others the most when talking about mental health. Comments such as ‘I am’ or ‘I feel’ were categorised as ‘self’ and comments such as ‘she is’, ‘he is’, ‘you are’ were categorised as ‘other’. All All discussions were more likely to come from women, but discussions of ‘self’ were particularly more likely to come from women than men. Do women find it easier to disclose their own experiences/feelings?
  • 71. Gender and original tweets vs retweets All We looked at whether people created original tweets, or retweeted other people’s. Of all the tweets we analysed, 60% were original tweets and 40% were retweets. Whilst women tweeted and retweeted more than men, both tweeted or retweeted at similar proportions. All
  • 73. Demographics (beta) considerations This data is based on key words in biographies, and is in ‘beta’ mode in Brandwatch at the moment. As such should be treated with caution. Mental health organisation tweets have been removed. This data would be more useful when compared to general Twitter demographics.
  • 74. Demographics (beta) professions Professions across all mental health conversations:
  • 75. Demographics (beta) interests Interests across all mental health conversations:
  • 76. Query
  • 77. Query considerations Keywords were sourced from this page on Wikipedia: http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mental_disorders Some words in the list were removed as they were highlighted by professionals as not being mental health issues e.g. Alzheimer’s. However, it is likely that some other words remaining in the query are not professionally considered to be mental health issues. As we are not mental health professionals, we have, where not advised otherwise, kept the large list from the Wikipedia page, rather than risk making incorrect judgements of our own. The report could be improved through partnership with a mental health organisation to validate the search terms.
  • 78. Appendix: mental health query site:"twitter.com" AND country:uk AND ("mental health" OR "Adjustment disorder" OR ((Adolescent OR adult OR childhood) NEAR/5 "antisocial behavior") OR "cognitive decline" OR Agoraphobia OR ((Alcohol OR Barbiturate OR Benzodiazepine OR cannabis OR cocaine) NEAR/20 (abuse OR dependence OR withdrawal OR misuse OR addiction)) OR alcoholism OR "Amnestic disorder" OR "Amphetamine dependence" OR "Amphetamine withdrawal psychosis" OR Anorexia OR amnesia OR "personality disorder" OR Anxiety OR "Anxiolytic-related" OR "Attention deficit" OR (raw:ADD AND (attention OR deficit)) OR hyperactivity OR Autophagia OR Bibliomania OR "eating disorder" OR Bipolar OR "Body dysmorphic" OR "Borderline intellectual functioning" OR "Borderline personality" OR psychotic OR Bulimia OR "Caffeine-related disorder" OR Claustrophobia OR "Catatonic disorder" OR schizophrenia OR "sleep disorder" OR "Cognitive disorder" OR "Communication disorder" OR "Conduct disorder" OR "Cotard delusion" OR Cyclothymia OR "Delirium tremens" OR "Depersonalization disorder" OR "Depressive disorder" OR Depression OR depressed OR "Derealization disorder" OR Desynchronosis OR "Developmental coordination disorder" OR "Diogenes Syndrome" OR Dispareunia OR "Dissociative identity disorder" OR Dysthymia OR EDNOS OR Encopresis OR "Ekbom's Syndrome" OR "Delusional Parasitosis" OR Enuresis OR Erotomania OR Exhibitionism OR "Factitious disorder" OR "Fregoli delusion" OR Frotteurism OR "Fugue State" OR "Ganser syndrome" OR "General adaptation syndrome" OR "Grandiose delusions" OR "Hallucinogen-related disorder" OR "Hallucinogen persisting perception" OR "Histrionic personality" OR "Hypomanic episode" OR Hypochondriasis OR Hypochondria OR "Impulse control disorder" OR "Inhalant abuse" OR Insomnia OR "Intellectual disability" OR "Intermittent explosive disorder" Kleptomania OR "Korsakoff's syndrome" OR "Lacunar amnesia" OR "Male erectile disorder" OR Malingering OR "Manic episode" OR "Mathematics disorder" OR "Medication-related disorder" OR Melancholia OR Misophonia OR "Mood disorder" OR "Mood episode" OR "Morbid jealousy" OR "Munchausen's syndrome" OR Narcissistic OR "Neglect of child" OR "Neuroleptic-related disorder" OR "Nicotine withdrawal" OR "Night eating syndrome" OR "Nightmare disorder" OR "Obsessive-compulsive" OR OCD OR Oneirophrenia OR "Opioid dependence" OR "Opioid-related disorder" OR "Oppositional defiant disorder" OR "Pain disorder" OR "Panic disorder" OR "panic attack" OR (Paranoia NOT (game OR playing)) OR Parasomnia OR "Parkinson's Disease" OR "Partner relational problem" OR "Pathological gambling" OR Perfectionism OR "Persecutory delusion" OR "Pervasive developmental disorder" OR PDD OR Phencyclidine OR "Phobic disorder" OR "Phonological disorder" OR "Physical abuse" OR Pica OR "Polysubstance-related disorder" OR "Post-traumatic embitterment" OR PTED OR "Posttraumatic stress" OR PTSD OR "Primary hypersomnia" OR "Primary insomnia" OR "Psychological factor" OR Psychotic OR Pyromania OR "Reactive attachment" OR "Reading disorder" OR "Recurrent brief depression" OR "Relational disorder" OR senile OR senility OR schizophrenia OR "Rett's disorder" OR "Rumination syndrome" OR Schizoaffective OR Schizoid OR Schizophrenia OR Schizophreniform OR Schizotypal OR "Seasonal affective disorder" OR ((Sedative OR hypnotic OR anxiolytic) NEAR/10 "related disorder") OR "Selective mutism" OR "Severe mental retardation" OR "Sleep disorder" OR "Sleep terror" OR Sleepwalking OR "Social phobia" OR Somatization OR Somatoform OR "Specific phobia" OR "Stendhal syndrome" OR "Stereotypic movement disorder" OR Stuttering OR "Substance-related disorder" OR "Tardive dyskinesia" OR Tourette OR Tourettes OR Trichotillomania)
  • 79. Appendix: to or by mental health orgs query site:"twitter.com" AND ( author: ( timetotalk OR mindcharity OR timetochange OR youngmindsuk OR rethink_ depressionall OR starwards OR charitysane OR nsunnews OR mindfulluk OR beated OR micprisons OR bwdmind OR ls_mind OR bristolmind OR cardiff_mind OR ulverstonmind OR andovermind OR mmic_ OR manchestermind OR leedsmind OR mindwestsussex OR kaleidoscope_pg OR nottsmind OR sunderlandmind OR mindincroydon OR mborostcktnmind OR pfmind OR yaspproject OR suffolkmind OR hf_mind OR midessexmind OR tynesidemind OR rb_mind OR washingtonmind OR flintshiremind OR welmind1 OR mindbrighton OR lancsmind OR inworksupport OR mindinharingey OR stockportmind OR mindincambs OR togmind OR rochdalemind OR mindinenfield OR telfordmind OR jemfmurphy OR voicecollective OR shorpshiremind OR wboroughmind OR westleicsmind OR mattsolentmind OR colchestermind OR southendmind OR theyorkmind OR minortranx OR restormelmind OR mindhey OR matvmind OR west_essex_mind OR oxfordshiremind OR chmind OR swanseamind OR emergenceplus OR mental_healthy OR endthestigma OR mhf_tweets OR ontheborderline OR nimhgov OR mentalhealth_uk OR togetheruk OR anxietyuk OR rcpsych) OR timetotalk OR mindcharity OR timetochange OR youngmindsuk OR raw:@rethink_ OR raw:@ReThink_ OR raw:@Rethink_ OR depressionall OR starwards OR charitysane OR nsunnews OR mindfulluk OR (raw:@beatED OR raw:@beated OR raw:@BEATED OR raw:@Beated) OR micprisons OR bwdmind OR ls_mind OR bristolmind OR cardiff_mind OR ulverstonmind OR andovermind OR mmic_ OR manchestermind OR leedsmind OR mindwestsussex OR kaleidoscope_pg OR nottsmind OR sunderlandmind OR mindincroydon OR mborostcktnmind OR pfmind OR yaspproject OR suffolkmind OR hf_mind OR midessexmind OR tynesidemind OR rb_mind OR washingtonmind OR flintshiremind OR welmind1 OR mindbrighton OR lancsmind OR inworksupport OR mindinharingey OR stockportmind OR mindincambs OR togmind OR rochdalemind OR mindinenfield OR telfordmind OR jemfmurphy OR voicecollective OR shorpshiremind OR wboroughmind OR westleicsmind OR mattsolentmind OR colchestermind OR southendmind OR theyorkmind OR minortranx OR restormelmind OR mindhey OR matvmind OR west_essex_mind OR oxfordshiremind OR chmind OR swanseamind OR emergenceplus OR mental_healthy OR endthestigma OR mhf_tweets OR ontheborderline OR nimhgov OR mentalhealth_uk OR togetheruk OR anxietyuk OR rcpsych)