JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Buprenorphine is an FDA-approved medication for Opioid Use Disorder (OUD). However, individuals with OUD often report information needs regarding buprenorphine treatment on social media platforms like Reddit. The field lacks a systematic approach to organize this data and characterize treatment information needs (TINs) that may be unique and unavailable elsewhere.

Objective:

In this study, we curate and analyze large-scale data from social media to characterize self-reported buprenorphine treatment information needs (TINs) using thematic analysis.

Methods:

We collected 15,253 Reddit posts from r/Suboxone. Following a standard protocol and guidance from clinical experts, we first identified five main themes from the data and then manually coded 6,000 posts based on these themes. Finally, we determined the most frequently appearing topics within each theme by analyzing samples from each group.

Results:

Among the 6,000 posts, 40.3% contained a single theme, 36% two themes, and 13.9% three themes. The most frequent topics within each theme or theme combination came with several findings - prevalent reporting of psychological and physical effects during recovery, complexities in accessing buprenorphine, and significant information gaps regarding medication administration, tapering, and usage of substances during different stages of recovery. Moreover, self-treatment strategies and peer-driven advice reveal potential rumors and misinformation.

Conclusions:

The findings obtained using our proposed framework can inform interventions to improve patient education and communication to address treatment-related knowledge gaps and harmful misinformation and streamline the generation of hypotheses for clinical research on MOUD treatment.