Coping with depression: a narrative study of an online depression community in China

ABSTRACT

Purpose

The goal of this study was to explore the coping strategies of depression sufferers that have worked for them based on the study of an online depression community.

Methods

We conducted a thematic narrative analysis of 120 stories posted by the members in the largest online depression community in China. MaxQDA version 18 was used to code the data, and the analytic approach was consistent with the category-centred approach of grounded theory.

Results

The study found that the coping strategies mainly include self-reconciliation (e.g., perceiving/accepting feelings, accepting the present self, and holding hope for the future), actions (recreational activities, physical exercise, and engaging in volunteer work), addressing the stressors and symptoms (e.g., staying away from stressors, seeing the doctor), and seeking interpersonal support (e.g., seeking support from family, friends, and peers).

Conclusion

The findings revealed the coping strategies that were helpful and examined how they functioned for the affected members, which make up for the lack of attention to the individual experiences of depression sufferers in coping research. The findings also have practical implications for the related education and consultation, providing useful insights for doctors and patients. These ways of coping are based on depression sufferer’ anonymous narratives, which can be convincing to clients.

KEYWORDS:

• Depression
• online community
• coping
• self-reconciliation
• action
• stressors
• seeking support

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Ethical Statement

Our study is exempt from an ethical board approval. The reason is that Douban is a public online platform and people use pseudonyms to post messages and their identity is anonymous. Moreover, users know that their posts are available to the public and participants automatically give their consent when posting anonymously. Therefore, following suggestions proposed in previous research Kinloch and Jaworska (2021), consent was sought from the Douban platform to use the forum data for the study.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Xin Li

Xin Li (Ph.D., Wuhan University, China) is a lecturer in the College of Communication Science and Art at Chengdu University of Technology, Chengdu, China. Her research focuses on health communication. Her work has been published in Qualitative Health Research. Email: [email protected]

Kaibin Xu

Kaibin Xu (Ph.D., University of Colorado, Boulder, USA) is a professor in the Foreign Studies College at Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China. His research focuses on health, culture and communication. His work has appeared in academic journals including Communication Monographs, Management Communication Quarterly, Journal of Business Ethics, Qualitative Health Research, Health Communication, Journal of Loss and Trauma, Feminist Media Studies, Asian Journal of Communication, and International Journal of Communication. Email: [email protected]