Projects

Project Description

Social media platforms like TikTok have become increasingly used to learn about mental health treatments. On the one hand, this creates an engaging format to disseminate information about mental health treatments and to share lived experiences with a particular treatment. On the other hand, content on TikTok may contain misinformation or contain negative views on mental health treatments that may unduly discourage people from using treatments despite there being strong research support for the treatment. One particular mental health treatment is called exposure therapy and it is commonly used to treat anxiety-based disorders. There is research support for exposure therapy reducing anxiety symptoms and it being a safe treatment. Despite this empirical support, we know that not everyone benefits from this treatment, and not everyone holds a positive view of exposure therapy. In the proposed set of studies, the student would watch TikTok videos on exposure therapy and rate things like whether the video focuses on benefits of exposure therapy or criticizes exposure therapy. This research will provide insight into the frequency with which exposure therapy videos on TikTok hold a positive, neutral, and negative tone. By having a broader understanding of attitudes and beliefs contained in videos, we can ask more specific questions to see if these finding vary based on certain psychological disorders or who the poster is (patient or therapist). This represents a novel way of assessing attitudes toward exposure therapy and could inform future directions about how therapists talk with patients about exposure therapy.

Technology or Computational Component

The project has a technological , but not computational component, as it would involve analyzing social media data