Classifying minority stress disclosure on social media with bidirectional long short-term memory

Abstract

Because of their stigmatized social status, sexual and gen-der minority (SGM; e.g., gay, transgender) people experi-ence minority stress (i.e., identity-based stress arising from adverse social conditions). Given that minority stress is the leading framework for understanding health inequity among SGM people, researchers and clinicians need accu-rate methods to detect minority stress. Since social media fulfills important developmental, affiliative, and coping functions for SGM people, social media may be an ecolog-ically valid channel for detecting minority stress. In this paper, we propose a bidirectional long short-term memory (BI-LSTM) network for classifying minority stress dis-closed on Reddit. Our experiments on a dataset of 12,645 Reddit posts resulted in an average accuracy of 65%.

Cory J. Cascalheira

Doctoral Candidate in Counseling Psychology

Research interests include (1) the examination of stress-based, multilevel determinants and mechanisms conferring risk for LGBTQ+ health disparities (e.g., substance misuse); (2) the use of artificial intelligence and big data to understand LGBTQ+ health behaviors and outcomes; and (3) the development of innovative digital health interventions. Clinical interests include ACT, CBT, COPE, PE, CPT, and MI for substance use disorders and posttraumatic stress disorder.