The Effect of Moderation on Online Mental Health Conversations
- URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2005.09225v7
- Date: Thu, 22 Apr 2021 22:00:35 GMT
- Title: The Effect of Moderation on Online Mental Health Conversations
- Authors: David Wadden, Tal August, Qisheng Li, Tim Althoff
- Abstract summary: The presence of a moderator increased user engagement, encouraged users to discuss negative emotions more candidly, and dramatically reduced bad behavior among chat participants.
Our findings suggest that moderation can serve as a valuable tool to improve the efficacy and safety of online mental health conversations.
- Score: 17.839146423209474
- License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
- Abstract: Many people struggling with mental health issues are unable to access
adequate care due to high costs and a shortage of mental health professionals,
leading to a global mental health crisis. Online mental health communities can
help mitigate this crisis by offering a scalable, easily accessible alternative
to in-person sessions with therapists or support groups. However, people
seeking emotional or psychological support online may be especially vulnerable
to the kinds of antisocial behavior that sometimes occur in online discussions.
Moderation can improve online discourse quality, but we lack an understanding
of its effects on online mental health conversations. In this work, we
leveraged a natural experiment, occurring across 200,000 messages from 7,000
online mental health conversations, to evaluate the effects of moderation on
online mental health discussions. We found that participation in group mental
health discussions led to improvements in psychological perspective, and that
these improvements were larger in moderated conversations. The presence of a
moderator increased user engagement, encouraged users to discuss negative
emotions more candidly, and dramatically reduced bad behavior among chat
participants. Moderation also encouraged stronger linguistic coordination,
which is indicative of trust building. In addition, moderators who remained
active in conversations were especially successful in keeping conversations on
topic. Our findings suggest that moderation can serve as a valuable tool to
improve the efficacy and safety of online mental health conversations. Based on
these findings, we discuss implications and trade-offs involved in designing
effective online spaces for mental health support.
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