COVID-19 pandemic has adversely and disproportionately impacted people suffering from mental health issues and substance use problems. This has been exacerbated by social isolation during the pandemic and the social stigma associated with mental health and substance use disorders, making people reluctant to share their struggles and seek help. Due to the anonymity and privacy they provide, social media emerged as a convenient medium for people to share their experiences about their day to day struggles. Reddit is a well-recognized social media platform that provides focused and structured forums called subreddits, that users subscribe to and discuss their experiences with others. Temporal assessment of the topical correlation between social media postings about mental health/substance use and postings about Coronavirus is crucial to better understand public sentiment on the pandemic and its evolving impact, especially related to vulnerable populations. In this study, we conduct a longitudinal topical analysis of postings between subreddits r/depression, r/Anxiety, r/SuicideWatch, and r/Coronavirus, and postings between subreddits r/opiates, r/OpiatesRecovery, r/addiction, and r/Coronavirus from January 2020 - October 2020. Our results show a high topical correlation between postings in r/depression and r/Coronavirus in September 2020. Further, the topical correlation between postings on substance use disorders and Coronavirus fluctuates, showing the highest correlation in August 2020. By monitoring these trends from platforms such as Reddit, epidemiologists, and mental health professionals can gain insights into the challenges faced by communities for targeted interventions.

中文翻译：

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CODID-19和Reddit上的心理健康/物质使用障碍：一项纵向研究

COVID-19大流行对患有精神健康问题和药物滥用问题的人们造成了不利和不成比例的影响。大流行期间的社会隔离以及与精神健康和毒品使用障碍相关的社会污名使情况更加恶化，使人们不愿分享自己的斗争并寻求帮助。由于它们提供的匿名性和隐私性，社交媒体成为人们共享日常斗争经验的便捷媒体。Reddit是一个公认的社交媒体平台，它提供了称为subreddits的集中且结构化的论坛，用户可以订阅并与他人讨论他们的经验。对社会媒体关于心理健康/物质使用的发布与关于冠状病毒的发布之间的主题相关性进行时间评估，对于更好地了解公众对该流行病及其演变影响，尤其是与弱势人群有关的情绪至关重要。在这项研究中，我们对子征状r /抑郁，r /焦虑症，r / SuicideWatch和r /冠状病毒之间的投稿，以及子征状r /鸦片，r /阿片酸盐恢复，r /成瘾和r /之间的投稿进行了纵向主题分析。 2020年1月至2020年10月的冠状病毒。我们的结果显示，2020年9月在r /抑郁症和r /冠状病毒中发表的主题相关性很高。此外，在物质使用障碍和冠状病毒中发表的主题相关性波动，在8月显示出最高的相关性。 2020年。