Emotional Word Use in Informal Carers of People Living With Dementia: Linguistic Analysis of Online Discussion Forums

Abstract

Background Informal dementia care is uniquely stressful and necessitates effective methods of identifying and understanding the needs of potentially at-risk carers so that they can be supported and sustained in their roles. One such method is examining carers’ engagement in online support platforms. 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 analyzed the content of posts on discussion forums specific to carers of people living with dementia in order to examine their emotional states. Objective We addressed the following research questions: (1) To what extent does emotional language use differ between carers of people living with dementia and noncarers? (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 (LIWC) program to examine emotional word use on a UK-based online forum for informal carers of people living with dementia 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 carers of people living with dementia used significantly more negative, but not positive, emotion words than noncarers. 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 carers of people living with dementia may be at increased risk of negative emotional states relative to noncarers. 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.