"It's another gay disease": an intersectional qualitative approach contextualizing the lived experiences of young gay, bisexual, and other sexual minoritized men in the United States during the mpox outbreak.

BACKGROUND: The U.S. mpox outbreak in 2022 introduced new and exacerbated existing challenges that disproportionately stigmatize gay, bisexual, and other sexual minoritized men (GBSMM). This study contextualizes the perceptions, susceptibility, and lived experiences of the mpox outbreak among GBSMM in the U.S. using an intersectional framework. METHODS: Between September 2022 to February 2023, we conducted 33 semi-structured qualitative interviews with purposively sampled GBSMM in the Northeast and the South region of the United States on various aspects related to their experience during the mpox outbreak. RESULTS: We identified four themes: (1) understanding and conceptualizations of mpox, (2) mpox vaccine availability and accessibility, (3) mpox vaccine hesitancy and mistrust, and (4) call to action and recommendations. GBSMM collectively discussed the elevated mpox stigmatization and homophobic discourse from mainstream social media and news outlets. GBSMM also discussed the lack of availability of mpox vaccines, unclear procedures to receive the vaccine, and continued mistrust in government, non-government, and other institutions of health that were complicit in anti-LGBTQ + narratives related to mpox. However, they expressed that these challenges may be addressed through more LGTBQ + representation and leveraging ways to empower these communities. CONCLUSION: GBSMM have mpox experiences that are distinct and multifaceted. Effectively addressing mpox and mitigating public health emergencies for GBSMM requires prioritizing destigmatizing communication channels and vaccine distribution strategies by centering their stories and lived experiences to advance health equity.

Potentially Traumatic Events of Women of Color in an Urban Adult Basic Education Program.

Adult Basic Education (ABE) in the United States is an important tool for underrepresented and underserved communities to achieve the goal of high school graduation following noncompletion of K-12 education. Largely in urban settings, ABE centers serve millions of students annually, especially historically and contemporarily marginalized groups. ABE provides critical resources and skills to meet the educational needs of diverse peoples seeking to advance their station in life. ABE centers may serve students with potentially traumatic events (PTE), diagnosable trauma, and related poorer outcomes. Alarmingly, a paucity of research exists that examines the presence of PTEs for ABE students, particularly people and women of color. In the present research, the Patient Health Questionnaire 9-item and Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item measures were used to weigh depression and anxiety scores across the Life Events Checklist for the DSM-5 (LEC-5) trauma types in a sample (N=170) of predominantly women of color. We examined three respondent groups based on proximity and frequency of PTEs: (1) denied; (2) witnessed/learned about; and (3) experienced. Results indicate that those experiencing higher levels of PTEs (namely, sexual assault, unwanted/uncomfortable sexual experience, and sudden accidental death) also experienced higher ratings of depression and anxiety. More research is indicated, as women of color within ABE settings could benefit from tailored resources for prevention, intervention, and treatment.

Leveraging Natural Language Processing to Evaluate Young Adults' User Experiences with a Digital Sleep Intervention for Alcohol Use.

Evaluating user experiences with digital interventions is critical to increase uptake and adherence, but traditional methods have limitations. We incorporated natural language processing (NLP) with convergent mixed methods to evaluate a personalized feedback and coaching digital sleep intervention for alcohol risk reduction: 'Call it a Night' (CIAN; N = 120). In this randomized clinical trial with young adults with heavy drinking, control conditions were A + SM: web-based advice + active and passive monitoring; and A: advice + passive monitoring. Findings converged to show that the CIAN treatment condition group found feedback and coaching most helpful, whereas participants across conditions generally found advice helpful. Further, most participants across groups were interested in varied whole-health sleep-related factors besides alcohol use (e.g., physical activity), and many appreciated increased awareness through monitoring with digital tools. All groups had high adherence, satisfaction, and reported feasibility, but participants in CIAN and A + SM reported significantly higher effectiveness than those in A. NLP corroborated positive sentiments across groups and added critical insight that sleep, not alcohol use, was a main participant motivator. Digital sleep interventions are an acceptable, novel alcohol treatment strategy, and improving sleep and overall wellness may be important motivations for young adults. Further, NLP provides an efficient convergent method for evaluating experiences with digital interventions.

#MentalHealthArt: How Instagram artists promote mental health awareness online.

OBJECTIVES: Instagram artwork about mental illness was examined to learn how artists promote awareness about mental health and mental illness. STUDY DESIGN: Mixed methods predictive and descriptive analyses were conducted on a public dataset of artwork posts from Instagram. METHODS: One thousand art images were classified by media (painting, drawing, collage, photograph, digital art, printmaking, sculpture, jewelry, or other) and style (representational, nonrepresentational, and functional). Text captions were clustered using latent semantic analysis. Predictive modeling was used to determine whether the frequency of online community response to posts (likes and comments) varied by artwork features or tagged mental health condition. RESULTS: Results suggest that artists using mental health art hashtags most often posted two-dimensional, representational art with text descriptions about emotions and personal experience. However, the minority of images of functional art objects received the most frequent number of community responses. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that artists may use informational and commercial strategies to engage online communities and promote mental health awareness.

Behind the Hashtag: Online Disclosure of Mental Illness and Community Response on Tumblr.

The present study examined personal disclosures about mental illness and the responses of online community members on the social media platform, Tumblr. We sampled public blog posts of 14,626 Tumblr users disclosing ten different mental health diagnoses using hashtags (e.g., #depression, #anxiety, and #anorexia). We examined the content of users' disclosures, predictors of disclosure frequency, and predictors of online community response. The content of most disclosures was related to users' emotions and cognitions about their mental health and their feelings of interpersonal loss and change over time. Content varied with users' disclosure frequency and with self-identified mental health diagnoses. Predictors of disclosure frequency included the "self effects" of writing about oneself or one's opinions, such as self-concept formation, and "reception effects" of receiving responses to one's writing. User disclosures generally increased with frequency of community response (reception effects), and the degree of this effect differed depending on the disclosed diagnosis (self effects). The responses of online community members also varied significantly across disclosed diagnoses. The implications of our findings for community research and action are discussed.