Large-Scale Social Media Analysis Reveals Emotions Associated with Nonmedical Prescription Drug Use.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The behaviors and emotions associated with and reasons for nonmedical prescription drug use (NMPDU) are not well-captured through traditional instruments such as surveys and insurance claims. Publicly available NMPDU-related posts on social media can potentially be leveraged to study these aspects unobtrusively and at scale.

Methods

We applied a machine learning classifier to detect self-reports of NMPDU on Twitter and extracted all public posts of the associated users. We analyzed approximately 137 million posts from 87,718 Twitter users in terms of expressed emotions, sentiments, concerns, and possible reasons for NMPDU via natural language processing.

Results

Users in the NMPDU group express more negative emotions and less positive emotions, more concern

SUBMITTER: Al-Garadi MA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10449547 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature