ArticleJournal of medical Internet research2025
The Impact of Linguistic Signals on Cognitive Change in Support Seekers in Online Mental Health Communities: Text Analysis and Empirical Study.
Article in Journal of medical Internet research, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
2 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Extending Signaling Theory in Online Health Communities to Address Medical Information Asymmetry: Systematic Review With Narrative Synthesis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Pooled it
- Expressive writing combined with digital cognitive therapy in patients with schizophrenia: a narrative review of efficacy, linguistic phenotypes, and adherence modulators.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2026Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundIn online mental health communities, the interactions among members can significantly reduce their psychological distress and enhance their mental well-being. The overall quality of support from others varies due to differences in people's capacities to help others. This results in some support seekers' needs being met, while others remain unresolved.
objectiveThis study aimed to examine which characteristics of the comments posted to provide support can make support seekers feel better (ie, result in cognitive change).
methodsWe used signaling theory to model the factors affecting cognitive change and used consulting strategies from the offline, face-to-face psychological counseling process to construct 6 characteristics: intimacy, emotional polarity, the use of first-person words, the use of future-tense words, specificity, and language style. Through text mining and natural language processing (NLP) technology, we identified linguistic features in online text and conducted an empirical analysis using 12,868 online mental health support reply data items from Zhihu to verify the effectiveness of those features.
resultsThe findings showed that support comments are more likely to alter support seekers' cognitive processes if those comments have lower intimacy (β
conclusionsOur research contributes to both theory and practice by proposing a model to reveal the factors that make support seekers feel better. The findings have significance for support providers. Additionally, our study offers pointers for managing and designing online communities for mental health.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.