JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) is a chronic disease that can be managed in part through healthy behaviours. However, the COVID-19 pandemic impacted how people managed their condition. Using social media forums and analytics through Patient-Generated Health Data (PGHD) presents an opportunity to understand the health behaviours from the perspective of the patient.

Objective:

Our objective is to understand how the health behaviours and attitudes of people living with T2D were impacted by the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic by examining Reddit forums (using PGHD) for people living with T2D.

Methods:

Data from the Reddit forums related to T2D from January 2018 to early March 2021 were downloaded, and Support Vector Machines (SVMs) were used to classify if a post was made in the context of the pandemic. Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modelling was performed to gather topics of discussion amongst the entire dataset and a subsequent iteration was performed to gather topics of discussion specific to the COVID-19 pandemic. Sentiment Analysis using the Valence Aware Dictionary for sEntiment Reasoning (VADER )algorithm was performed to gauge attitudes towards the pandemic.

Results:

Of all posts, topics of discussion were classified into themes of Managing Lifestyle, Managing Blood Glucose, Obtaining Diabetes Care, and Coping & Receiving Support. Amongst the COVID-specific posts topics of discussion were Coping with Poor Mental Health, Accessing Doctor & Medications and Controlling Blood Glucose, Changing Food Habits during Pandemic, Impact of Stress of Blood Glucose Levels, Changing Status of Employment & Insurance, Risk of COVID Complications. Overall, posts classified as COVID-related had were associated with lower sentiment than those classified as “noncovid.”

Conclusions:

Topics of discussion gauged from the Reddit forums provide a holistic perspective of the impact of the pandemic on people living with T2D. Overall, the early stages of the pandemic negatively impacted the attitudes of people living with T2D.