JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Growing numbers of informal dementia carers are turning to online discussion forums for support. Research has explored emotional word use on online discussion forums as a proxy for underlying emotional functioning. We are not aware of any research that has analysed the content of posts on discussion forums specific to dementia carers in order to examine their emotional states.

Objective:

We address the following research questions: 1) To what extent does emotional language use differ between dementia carers and non-carers? 2) To what extent does emotional language use differ between spousal and parental carers? 3) To what extent does emotional language use differ between current and former carers?

Methods:

We used the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count programme to examine emotional word use on a UK-based online forum for informal dementia carers and a discussion forum control group. Carers were separated into different subgroups for the analysis: current and former; and spousal and parental.

Results:

We found that dementia carers used significantly more negative, but not positive, emotion words than non-carers. Spousal carers used more emotion words overall than parental carers, specifically more negative emotion words. Former carers used more emotional words overall than current carers, specifically more positive words.

Conclusions:

The findings suggest that informal dementia carers may be at increased risk of negative emotional states, relative to non-carers. Greater negativity in spousal carers may be explained by increased caregiver burden, whereas greater positivity in former carers may be explained by functional relief of caregiving responsibilities. The theoretical/applied relevance of these findings is discussed.