Applying Natural Language Processing Techniques to Map Trends in Insomnia Treatment Terms on the r/Insomnia Subreddit: Infodemiology Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

People share health-related experiences and treatments, such as for insomnia, in digital communities. Natural language processing tools can be leveraged to understand the terms used in digital spaces to discuss insomnia and insomnia treatments.

Objective

The aim of this study is to summarize and chart trends of insomnia treatment terms on a digital insomnia message board.

Methods

We performed a natural language processing analysis of the r/insomnia subreddit. Using Pushshift, we obtained all r/insomnia subreddit comments from 2008 to 2022. A bag of words model was used to identify the top 1000 most frequently used terms, which were manually reduced to 35 terms related to treatment and medication use. Regular expression analysis was used to identify and coun

SUBMITTER: Cummins JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11757973 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature