I just want to matter: Examining the role of anti-mattering in online suicide support communities using natural language processing

Annually, tens of thousands of lives are affected by suicide, including those who die by suicide, attempt non-fatal suicidal behaviors, and suffer from suicidal thoughts and ideation as well as friends and family affected by the loss of loved ones. Although a number of predictors of suicidal thought...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Computers in human behavior 2023-02, Vol.139, p.107499, Article 107499
Main Authors: Deas, Nicholas, Kowalski, Robin, Finnell, Sophie, Radovic, Emily, Carroll, Hailey, Robbins, Chelsea, Cook, Andrew, Hurley, Kenzie, Cote, Natalie, Evans, Kelly, Lorenzo, Isabella, Kiser, Kelly, Mochizuki, Gabriela, Mock, Meredith, Brewer, Lyndsey
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anti-mattering
Machine learning
Online communities
Reddit
Suicidal ideation
Suicide
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Summary:Annually, tens of thousands of lives are affected by suicide, including those who die by suicide, attempt non-fatal suicidal behaviors, and suffer from suicidal thoughts and ideation as well as friends and family affected by the loss of loved ones. Although a number of predictors of suicidal thoughts and behaviors have been examined in the literature, the current study investigated the presence of anti-mattering and suicidal ideation in online peer support communities through the r/SuicideWatch subreddit community. A historical archive of posts made in the subreddit was collected using the Python Reddit API Wrapper (PRAW), resulting in a final anonymized corpus of 500,548 posts. A sample of 1,700 posts were hand-labeled for the presence of anti-mattering and other constructs in order to train and evaluate a classification model for automated labeling. Using the resulting model and keyword dictionaries, the entire corpus was labeled, informing a nomological network of anti-mattering in online peer-support communities. •People who feel that they don't matter seek out help in online communities.•Anti-mattering coded in nearly 70% of posts on r/SuicideWatch.•Anti-mattering correlates with loneliness, stress from others, shame, absolute talk, mental health, loss, and hopelessness.•Suicide prevention/intervention programs should work to increase feelings of mattering.
ISSN:0747-5632
1873-7692
DOI:10.1016/j.chb.2022.107499