Anxiety on the internet: Describing person, provider, and organization online posts

Abstract

Anxiety is a pervasive phenomenon in contemporary society. With increased internet use in recent years, more people in the general population are seeking and providing help and participating in community online. The goal of our study was to evaluate the content of internet narratives among those who post about anxiety and determine what stakeholder groups are saying online. We used the bifurcated method; it is a multi-method (qualitative) approach with inductive, thematic analyses, and with quantification of content-related words via a computer program that crawls websites and counts the occurrences of specified terms (for cross-checking purposes). Themes of posts and webpages about anxiety were: using/reporting treatment strategies (83.3% saturation), providing help (77.8% saturation), telling personal stories (72.2% saturation), seeking help (61.1% saturation), and illustrating interpersonal impact (50% saturation). We argue that anxiety stakeholders may take part in health co-inquiry online (i.e., cooperating with others) in many of the same ways that they might collaborate in person. We recommend that clinicians query their clients about use of the internet in ways related to their anxiety (e.g., seeking information/treatment strategies, offering help to others, telling their personal stories, etc.) so that they might help them process what they experience online.

SCIENCE AND PRACTICE NOTES

• In the COVID-19 era, anxiety has increased in the general population (Shigemura, Ursano, Morganstein, Kurosawa, & Benedek, 2020; Wang et al., 2020).

• Daily use of the internet in the general population is extensive (Gangamma et al., 2022).

• Clients in therapy may use the internet in ways that interact with their clinical conditions, e.g., finding information, seeking support, providing others with information, searching/accessing services/treatment.

• It is vital for therapists to inquire in ways that improve their understanding of their clients’ uses of the internet.

Keywords:

• Anxiety
• blogs
• online forums
• health co-inquiry
• qualitative analysis

Authors’ contributions

• designing the work First and Second Authors

• acquiring the data ALL Authors

• interpreting the data ALL Authors

• drafting the work/revising the work critically for intellectual content First and Second Authors

With best regards,

The Authors

Author note

The authors note that we have received approval from our institution’s Research Participants Protection Program/IRB to conduct this study: Protocol HCo#1-2021+. There was no contact with human subjects; therefore, no informed consent was sought. The authors also declare that this manuscript reports original data that were collected by us. The paper is not under review by any other journal. In addition, we confirm that we are accountable for the work in our manuscript and that we stand behind the integrity of the data collection, analysis, and interpretation.

Declarations

The attached manuscript reports original data that were collected by us. The paper is not under review by any other journal. We received approval from our institutional review board for this project.

We confirm that we are accountable for the work in our manuscript and that we stand behind the integrity of the data collection, analysis, and interpretation. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by National Science Foundation CC-NIE Award Number #1541342 to our institution for technological development of research.