| Title: |
Detecting Critical Information Needs in Online Communities About Opioid Use for Pain Management: A Mixed-Method Study |
| Authors: |
Fan (Ellie) Yang; Kylee Kohlhoff; Lexi Marshall; Xing Fang; Randy Brown; Ryan Westergaard; Dhavan Shah |
| Source: |
Addiction & Prevention ; Volume 1 ; Issue 1 ; Pages: 3 |
| Publisher Information: |
Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute |
| Publication Year: |
2026 |
| Collection: |
MDPI Open Access Publishing |
| Subject Terms: |
addiction prevention; chronic pain; harm reduction; information seeking; online health communities; opioid use; social media; thematic analysis |
| Description: |
Background: Online communities such as Reddit can reveal critical information needs (CINs) among people who discuss opioid use for chronic or acute pain under conditions of stigma and uncertainty. Methods: We used a mixed-method design to analyze 3428 unique Reddit posts from 1 January to 31 December 2022. Sentence-BERT embeddings and K-means clustering identified eight dominant themes, followed by qualitative analysis of a random subsample of 400 posts. Results: The most prevalent theme was seeking alternatives to opioids for pain relief (28.00%), followed by medications for chronic pain (19.84%) and kratom use experiences (14.64%). Qualitative findings showed recurrent concerns about addiction, stigma in clinical encounters, withdrawal, treatment access, and peer-to-peer discussion of kratom, tianeptine, cannabis, and other substitute substances. Conclusions: The study suggests an unmet need for accessible, nonstigmatizing, and clinically grounded information on pain management, tapering, and lower-risk alternatives to opioid use. These results have implications for addiction prevention, harm reduction, and patient-facing communication strategies for clinical practice and community health. |
| Document Type: |
text |
| File Description: |
application/pdf |
| Language: |
English |
| Relation: |
https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/addictprev1010003 |
| DOI: |
10.3390/addictprev1010003 |
| Availability: |
https://doi.org/10.3390/addictprev1010003 |
| Rights: |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| Accession Number: |
edsbas.F3DA733E |
| Database: |
BASE |