Studying Online Support For Caregivers Of Patients With Alzheimer'S Disease In China: A Text-Mining Approach To Online Forum In China

Owing to the constant physical and emotional stress suffered by patients of Alzheimer's disease, the need for a 24/7 care provision is not only challenging to the patients, but especially so for their caregivers. Past studies on how to support the caregivers of Alzheimer's disease patients have largely been conducted via qualitative analyses and/or studies based on survey data, in contrast, the present study examines online support for dementia caregivers by utilizing a text-mining approach to explore what caregivers have shared online. Specifically, the study shows that online support empowers caregivers with a convenient e-channel to share information, emotions, caring skills, and mutual support. Theoretically, the approach also reveals that text-mining techniques are an instructive method to assist future researchers on exploring digital health issues in this age of big data. Using the text-mining techniques, healthcare providers, researchers, and caregivers are poised to make good use of a diverse array of textual healthcare information from the Internet