What do patients learn about psychotropic medications on the web? A natural language processing study.

Background: Low rates of medication adherence remain a major challenge across psychiatry. In part, this likely reflects patient concerns about safety and adverse effects, accurate or otherwise. We therefore sought to characterize online information about common psychiatric medications in terms of po...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Affective Disorders Vol. 260; pp. 366 - 372
Main Authors: Hart, Kamber L., Perlis, Roy H., McCoy, Thomas H., McCoy, Thomas H Jr
Format: research tables/charts Journal Article
Published: Elsevier B.V. Jan2020
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
fields @attributes:
  recordID: 1
pdfLink:
plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=141606835&site=ehost-live
header:
  @attributes:
    shortDbName: ccm
    uiTerm: 141606835
    longDbName: CINAHL Complete
    uiTag: AN
  controlInfo:
    bkinfo:
    dissinfo:
    jinfo:
      jid:
        01650327
        3M9
      jtl: Journal of Affective Disorders
      issn: 01650327
      maglogo: N
    pubinfo:
      dt: Jan2020
      vid: 260
      pid: 1004
      pub: Elsevier B.V.
    artinfo:
      ui:
        141606835
        141606835
        NLM31539672
        141606835
        10.1016/j.jad.2019.09.043
        NLM31539672
        141606835
      ppf: 366
      ppct: 6
      formats:
      tig:
        atl: What do patients learn about psychotropic medications on the web? A natural language processing study.
      aug:
        au:
          Hart, Kamber L.
          Perlis, Roy H.
          McCoy, Thomas H.
          McCoy, Thomas H Jr
        affil: Center for Quantitative Health, Massachusetts General Hospital, 185 Cambridge Street, 6th Floor, Boston, MA 02114, USA
      sug:
        subj:
          Internet
          Psychotropic Drugs Therapeutic Use
          Consumer Health Information
          Natural Language Processing
          Antipsychotic Agents Therapeutic Use
          Antimanic Agents Therapeutic Use
          Antidepressive Agents Therapeutic Use
          Male
          Female
          Medication Compliance
          Psychiatry Trends
          Funding Source
          Human
          Male
          Female
      ab: Background: Low rates of medication adherence remain a major challenge across psychiatry. In part, this likely reflects patient concerns about safety and adverse effects, accurate or otherwise. We therefore sought to characterize online information about common psychiatric medications in terms of positive and negative sentiment.Methods: We applied a natural language processing tool to score the sentiment expressed in web search results for 51 psychotropic medications across 3 drug classes (antidepressants, antipsychotics, and mood stabilizers), as a means of seeing if articles referencing these medications were generally positive or generally negative in tone. We compared between medications of the same class, and across medication classes.Results: Across 12,733 web search results, significant within-class differences in positive (antidepressants: F(24,2682) = 2.97, p < 0.001; antipsychotics: F(16,4029) = 3.25, p < 0.001; mood stabilizers: F(8,2371) = 6.88, p < 0.001) and negative sentiment (antidepressants: F(24,6282) = 11.17, p < 0.001; antipsychotics: F(16, 4029)  = 12.13, p < 0.001; mood stabilizers: F(8, 2371) = 13.28, p < 0.001) were identified. Among these were significantly greater negative sentiment for the antidepressants sertraline, duloxetine, venlafaxine, and paroxetine, and for the antipsychotics, quetiapine and risperidone. Conversely, lithium preparations and valproate exhibited less negative sentiment than other mood stabilizing medications.Limitations: While these results provide a novel means of comparing medications, the present analyses cannot be linked to individual patient consumption of this information, or to its influence on their future clinical interactions.Conclusions: Overall, a subset of psychotropic medications were associated with significantly more negative sentiment. Characterizing these differences may allow clinicians to anticipate patient willingness to initiate or continue medications.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype:
        research
        tables/charts
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
    refInfo:
    holdings:
      @attributes:
        islocal: N