Madalyn Marcus*, York University, Toronto, Canada Kirsten Barnes, York University, Toronto, Canada Henny Westra, York University, Toronto, Canada John Eastwood, York University, Toronto, Canada Mobilizing Minds Research Group*, York University, Toronto, Canada Track: Research Presentation Topic: Blogs, Microblogs, Twitter Presentation Type: Oral presentation Submission Type: Single Presentation Building: MaRS Centre, 101 College Street, Toronto, Canada Room: CR3 Date: 2009-09-18 01:30 PM – 03:00 PM Last modified: 2009-08-13

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Background: One out of every four young adults will experience a mental disorder in any 12-month period. Despite this high prevalence rate, few young adults access treatment. Without treatment, these disorders are highly persistent, affecting many areas of development during the pivotal transition of adulthood. While much research has focused on understanding the barriers to service access, few studies have explored unbiased accounts of the experiences of young adults suffering from mental health disorders. It is through hearing these experiences and gaining an in-depth understanding of what is being said by young adults that improvements can be made to interventions focused on increasing access to care.
Objective: The present study moves beyond past research by using an innovative qualitative research methodology where the blogs of 8 young adults (aged 18-25) who are suffering from problems with mood and anxiety disorders were analyzed in an effort to understand their experiences.
Methods: An enhanced Internet search vehicle, DEVONagent (Mac OSx) was used to extract publicly available Internet Blogs using primary keywords related to mental health. All blogs were selected from the postings in the past 6 months from individuals aged 18 to 25 (6 female, 2 male) who were experiencing mental health problems. Blogs were analyzed using Grounded Theory and consensual qualitative analysis to determine emerging themes characterizing the experience of mental health problems.
Results: Two core categories emerged in the analysis. First, young adults reported a pervasive lack of control or sense of 'powerlessness' over all-consuming mental health problems but simultaneously felt that they ‘should’ have control over these experiences (i.e., self-blame, guilt). Second, young adults reported experiencing a strong sense of disconnection and alienation from others including significant others, their community, and mental health professionals. In the case of mental health professionals, they reported feeling under-treated or abandoned by the system and articulated strong mixed feelings regarding medication treatments. In contrast, they reported experiencing support and connection with others when blogging. This lack of support, understanding, and responsivity of others, including lay people, family/friends, and professionals, may perpetuate failure to seek help.
Conclusions: The results stress the need for a community of practice approach that includes decreasing young adults' sense of disconnection and alienation by designing community systems, which are inviting and give young adults a voice, and include a range of treatment options. This could be achieved by developing alternative or supplementary forms of support in non-medical environments, capitalizing on peer support, providing vehicles for communication, friendship, support and connection, as well as education/awareness training to the those around the sufferer in terms of how to best offer support and help and to reduce stigma.