Narratives of Anxiety and Depression on YouTube: A Corpus-Based Thematic Analysis

Abstract

Anxiety and depression (A & D) are among the most common mental health disorders faced globally and are often linked. Despite their high prevalence and association with suicidal thoughts and actions, many individuals affected by A & D refrain from seeking mental health support due to feelings of fear and shame. Online narrative communication, thus, emerges as a valuable avenue for addressing this gap, offering firsthand accounts and insights from individuals with lived experiences of A & D. Such public sharing also serves as a source of information and support for individuals experiencing A & D. This study set out to provide a comprehensive description of content in personal A & D stories posted on YouTube channels, to fulfil two objectives: to identify recurring lexical patterns and collocations in A & D stories, and to explore predominant thematic elements within the storytelling medium. We applied corpus-based thematic analysis, incorporating statistical analysis of linguistic patterns via AntConc and qualitative thematic analysis of 23 narrative YouTube videos identified using search terms ‘anxiety story ’ and ‘depression story ’. A top frequency wordlist was compiled, and the concordance lines of these words were examined to uncover key thematic elements of authentic A & D narratives to yield a better understanding of these stories. Five main thematic groups were identified across the A & D videos, where users ’ reported A & D experiences included pivotal moments during the illness, enduring emotional strain, proactive help-seeking, support from loved ones, and uplifting messages to the audience. The findings shed light on the salient linguistic patterns and common themes in authentic A & D narrative videos shared online. These insights can be valuable for developing a deeper understanding of A & D narrative construction, shedding light on the experiences during illness and potential audience interpretations on YouTube.

Keywords

Mental health narratives / Social media / Personal narratives / Online communication / Thematic analysis

Funding

This research received no external funding.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Xinxin Huang: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing-original draft, Methodology, Investigation. Yee Chin Gan: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Software, Supervision, Validation, Writing-review & editing, Project administration. Ayeshah Syed: Data curation, Formal analysis, Methodology, Validation, Writing-review & editing.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Data availability

Data will be made available on request.

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