Intensified preventive measures during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as lockdown and social distancing, heavily increased the perception of social isolation (i.e., a discrepancy between one's social needs and the provisions of the social environment) among young adults. Social isolation is closely associated with situational loneliness (i.e., loneliness emerging from environmental change), a risk factor for depressive symptoms. Prior research suggested vulnerable young adults are likely to seek support from an online social platform such as Reddit, a perceived comfortable environment for lonely individuals to seek mental health help through anonymous communication with a broad social network. Therefore, this study aims to identify and analyze depression-related dialogues on loneliness subreddits during the COVID-19 outbreak, with the implications on depression-related infoveillance during the pandemic. Our study utilized logistic regression and topic modeling to classify and examine depression-related discussions on loneliness subreddits before and during the pandemic. Our results showed significant increases in the volume of depression-related discussions (i.e., topics related to mental health, social interaction, family, and emotion) where challenges were reported during the pandemic. We also found a switch in dominant topics emerging from depression-related discussions on loneliness subreddits, from dating (prepandemic) to online interaction and community (pandemic), suggesting the increased expressions or need of online social support during the pandemic. The current findings suggest the potential of social media to serve as a window for monitoring public mental health. Our future study will clinically validate the current approach, which has implications for designing a surveillance system during the crisis.

中文翻译：

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COVID-19 爆发期间的心理健康大流行：社交媒体作为公共心理健康的窗口。

在 COVID-19 大流行期间加强的预防措施，例如封锁和社会疏远，大大增加了年轻人对社会孤立的看法（即一个人的社会需求与社会环境的规定之间的差异）。社会孤立与情境孤独感（即环境变化引起的孤独感）密切相关，情境孤独感是抑郁症状的危险因素。先前的研究表明，弱势的年轻人可能会从 Reddit 等在线社交平台寻求支持，这是一个让孤独的人通过与广泛的社交网络进行匿名交流来寻求心理健康帮助的舒适环境。因此，本研究旨在识别和分析 COVID-19 爆发期间与抑郁症相关的关于孤独 subreddits 的对话，大流行期间对抑郁症相关信息监控的影响。我们的研究利用逻辑回归和主题建模来分类和检查大流行之前和期间关于孤独 subreddits 的抑郁症相关讨论。我们的结果显示，在大流行期间报告了挑战，与抑郁症相关的讨论（即与心理健康、社交互动、家庭和情感相关的话题）的数量显着增加。我们还发现，从约会（大流行前）到在线互动和社区（大流行），从与抑郁症相关的孤独 subreddits 讨论中出现的主导话题发生了转变，这表明在大流行期间表达或需要在线社会支持的情况有所增加。目前的研究结果表明，社交媒体有潜力成为监测公众心理健康的窗口。我们未来的研究将在临床上验证当前的方法，这对在危机期间设计监测系统具有重要意义。