Mapping dementia caregivers' comments on social media with evidence-based care strategies for memory loss and confusion

Ning Zou, Yuelyu Ji, Bo Xie, Daqing He, Zhimeng Luo

Abstract: Dementia caregivers widely turn to social media for much needed information and support. Prior research on caregivers’ online information exchange has focused on the original questions or posts, without including peer comments in response to those original questions, which does not provide a complete picture of online information exchanges between caregivers and their peers. This paper provides a preliminary analysis of a subset of data from a larger project and suggests how peer comments might match with evidence-based care strategies for memory loss and confusion. A total of 954 peer comments on 114 Reddit posts for dementia memory loss and confusion were collected and mapped with 5 evidence-based strategies generated from 17 care strategies from 3 credible websites. Our results report how well peer comments on Reddit can map to existing evidence-based strategies, and provide preliminary evidence supporting the necessity of providing tailored information based on the patient’s characteristics, stages of disease, and the progression level of memory loss and confusion.