The view of #schizophrenia on Twitter (a splitting of the mind in 280 characters)

Abstract

Aim: The sharing about an important public health problem, schizophrenia is increasing on Twitter, whiches user number multiplies day by day. Stigmatization can be usually met in the disorder of complex etiology. In this study, we aimed to investigate perspectives and attitudes of community toward schizophrenia, schizopherene, schizophrenic, and paranoiac on social media -Twitter- in Turkey. Material and Method: During about a month, totally 1200 Tweets that contain one of these -“schizophrenia, schizopherene, schizophrenic, paranoiac”- are analyzed and evaluated according to these words’ usage in a pilot sample. After establishing inter-rater reliability, they are evaluated in 5 main dimensions; a) mocking/humorous b) negative c) inappropriate d) anti-psychiatric e) medically appropriate. In addition, those who shared their age and gender were also recorded. Results: It was seen that these four words were usually used “mocking/ humorous” (39.2% and “negative” (26%). The usage of the words in non-medical was predominant. Most medically appropriate usage belonged to “schizophrenia” (26.7%). The most “negative” and “mocking/ humorous” usage belonged to “schizophrenic” (33.2% and 45.8%, respectively). In terms of gender, the four words were used mocking/ humorous mostly in both gender (39.5% and 38.8%). Medically appropriate use of women was greater (14.8% vs 7.5%). Conclusion: Our findings show that the presence of a great deal of misuse of schizophrenia and related words on Twitter. This misuse is quite a few pronounced by the adjective use of the disorder. At the time of the easiness of reaching information and social media usage the lack of knowledge, stigma and attitude problems toward schizophrenia is at an important level.

Keywords

• schizophrenia
• social media
• Twitter
• stigma
• stigmatization
• paranoia

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