Abstract
Social media is emerging as a popular platform for health communication and has gained an even stronger impetus since the COVID-19 pandemic. With conversations about mental health slowly building momentum in recent times even in developing countries like India, this study sought to understand the current status of mental health communication on social media in the country. The factors predicting these communication behaviours were explored as well. The data comprised 421 participants (Mean age = 28.26 years) hailing from metros, urban and semi-urban areas. Almost 64% of participants reported having used social media for mental health communication. The extent of mental health knowledge and empathy emerged as the most consistent predictors of indulging in mental health communication behaviours on social media. Almost 92% of participants reported that they observed an increase in these communication behaviours among people, as a result of the pandemic.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Dr Moulika Mandal, Assistant Professor of Psychology and the entire batch of students registered for the course of Abnormal Psychology at FLAME University for assisting in the data collection process.
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The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest. The study did not receive any funding and was conducted independently.
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Patki, S., Iyer, A. (2022). Mental Health Communication on Social Media in India: Current Status and Predictors. In: Li, H., Ghorbanian Zolbin, M., Krimmer, R., Kärkkäinen, J., Li, C., Suomi, R. (eds) Well-Being in the Information Society: When the Mind Breaks. WIS 2022. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1626. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14832-3_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14832-3_6
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