Associations Between Affective States and Sexual and Health Status Among Men Who Have Sex With Men in China: Exploratory Study Using Social Media Data

Linguistic Analysis for Identifying Depression and Subsequent Suicidal Ideation on Weibo: Machine Learning Approaches

Depression is one of the most common mental illnesses but remains underdiagnosed. Suicide, as a core symptom of depression, urgently needs to be monitored at an early stage, i.e., the suicidal ideation (SI) stage. Depression and subsequent suicidal ideation should be supervised on social media. In this research, we investigated depression and concomitant suicidal ideation by identifying individuals' linguistic characteristics through machine learning approaches. On Weibo, we sampled 487,251 posts from 3196 users from the depression super topic community (DSTC) as the depression group and 357,939 posts from 5167 active users on Weibo as the control group. The results of the logistic regression model showed that the SCLIWC (simplified Chinese version of LIWC) features such as affection, positive emotion, negative emotion, sadness, health, and death significantly predicted depression (Nagelkerke's R2 = 0.64). For model performance: F-measure = 0.78, area under the curve (AUC) = 0.82. The independent samples' t-test showed that SI was significantly different between the depression (0.28 ± 0.5) and control groups (-0.29 ± 0.72) (t = 24.71, p < 0.001). The results of the linear regression model showed that the SCLIWC features, such as social, family, affection, positive emotion, negative emotion, sadness, health, work, achieve, and death, significantly predicted suicidal ideation. The adjusted R2 was 0.42. For model performance, the correlation between the actual SI and predicted SI on the test set was significant (r = 0.65, p < 0.001). The topic modeling results were in accordance with the machine learning results. This study systematically investigated depression and subsequent SI-related linguistic characteristics based on a large-scale Weibo dataset. The findings suggest that analyzing the linguistic characteristics on online depression communities serves as an efficient approach to identify depression and subsequent suicidal ideation, assisting further prevention and intervention.

The Impact of Mortality Salience, Negative Emotions and Cultural Values on Suicidal Ideation in COVID-19: A Conditional Process Model

As suicides incurred by the COVID-19 outbreak keep happening in many countries, researchers have raised concerns that the ongoing pandemic may lead to "a wave of suicides" in society. Suicidal ideation (SI) is a critical factor in conducting suicide intervention and also an important indicator for measuring people's mental health. Therefore, it is vital to identify the influencing factors of suicidal ideation and its psychological mechanism during the outbreak. Based on the terror management theory, in the present study we conducted a social media big data analysis to explore the joint effects of mortality salience (MS), negative emotions (NE), and cultural values on suicidal ideation in 337 regions on the Chinese mainland. The findings showed that (1) mortality salience was a positive predictor of suicidal ideation, with negative emotions acting as a mediator; (2) individualism was a positive moderator in the first half-path of the mediation model; (3) collectivism was a negative moderator in the first half-path of the mediation model. Our findings not only expand the application of the terror management theory in suicide intervention but provide some insights into post-pandemic mental healthcare. Timely efforts are needed to provide psychological interventions and counseling on outbreak-caused negative emotions in society. Compared with people living in collectivism-prevailing regions, those living in individualism-prevailing regions may be more vulnerable to mortality salience and negative emotions and need more social attention.

Analysis of the causes of inferiority feelings based on social media data with Word2Vec

Feelings of inferiority are complex emotions that usually indicate perceived weakness and helplessness. A lack of timely and effective interventions may bring serious consequences to individuals with inferiority feelings. Due to privacy concerns, those people often hesitate to seek face-to-face help, but they usually spontaneously share their feelings on social media, which makes social media a good resource for ample inferiority-related data. We randomly selected a sample of posts indicating inferiority feelings to explore the causes of inferiority. Through language analysis and natural language processing, we constructed a Word2Vec model of inferiority based on social media data and applied it to the cause analysis of inferiority feelings. The main causes of inferiority feelings are personal experience, social interaction, love relationship, etc. People feeling inferior about their personal experiences usually are largely influenced by their ways of thinking and life attitudes. Social and emotional factors overlap somewhat in the development of inferiority. In love relationships, males are more prone to inferiority feeling than females. These findings will help relevant institutions and organizations better understand people with inferiority feelings and facilitate the development of targeted treatment for those with potential self-esteem problems.

Correlates of group sex participation among men who have sex with men in Chongqing, Southwestern China

BACKGROUND

Findings from specific countries indicated group sex was common among men who have sex with men (MSM), and men who reported group sex participation were at increased risk of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/sexually transmitted infections (STIs). The purpose of the current analysis was to describe the prevalence and correlates of group sex participation among a community-based sample of MSM in Chongqing, southwestern China.

METHODS

Convenience sampling method was used to recruit participants and data were collected through an anonymous questionnaire. Logistic regression analysis was employed to identify correlates of group sex participation.

RESULTS

Overall, 1151 eligible participants were enrolled in the study. 14.7% of MSM reported participating in group sex in their lifetime, and 5.8% reported group sex participation in the prior 6 months. Factors positively associated with group sex participation in both the prior 6 months and the lifetime included: monthly income ≥3000 Yuan (adjusted odds ratios [aOR] = 3.67, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.25-10.75; aOR = 2.30, 95% CI 1.21-4.35), initiating anal sex before 18 years old (aOR = 1.86, 95% CI 1.03-3.34; aOR = 2.00, 95% CI 1.31-3.05), using gay apps to seek sex partners (aOR = 7.41, 95% CI 2.57-21.33; aOR = 9.75, 95% CI 4.92-19.33), recreational drug use (aOR = 10.10, 95% CI 5.52-18.49; aOR = 4.75, 95% CI 3.20-7.05) and having condomless internal ejaculation (CIE) (aOR = 3.66, 95% CI 2.01-6.68; aOR = 1.61, 95% CI 1.11-2.35). Factors only associated with group sex participation in the lifetime were older age (age between 26 and 35 years old: aOR = 2.06, 95% CI 1.30-3.26; age > 35 years old: aOR = 1.95, 95% CI 1.10-3.46) and history of STIs (aOR = 2.51, 95% CI 1.37-4.62).

CONCLUSIONS

The results of this study suggested that group sex participation was a potentially risky context for acquisition and transmission of HIV/STIs. Close attention should be given to MSM who participated in group sex, and appropriate risk reduction interventions should be developed specific to this subgroup of MSM.