Gender-based Differences in the Relationship of Internet Searches to Behavioral Health-related Mortality in the United States

• In Event: 368 - Section on Alcohol, Drugs, and Tobacco Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 04. Substance Use and Health Inequalities

Abstract

Suicides, alcohol-induced causes of death (AICD), and drug-induced causes of death (DICD) are at the highest rates seen in years. These causes of death are higher for men than for women. With the stigma associated with mental health and substance use issues, many people search online for resources to resolve such problems. The current paper explores whether volumes of searches in popular search engine Google are able to account for any of the variation on rates of suicide, AICD, and DICD by gender for the years 2012-2014, drawing on the L1-regularization modeling method. Google search terms were selected based on categories of Pearlin’s (1981) stress process model. Google search term data were paired with suicide, AICD, and DICD data from the CDC WONDER dataset. Preliminary analyses show that Google terms were able to explain some of the variation in male suicide and male DICD, but not for male AICD or any of the rates of death for females. Revision of the model by either revising the search terms or making use of an alternate dataset on prevalence of mental illness and substance use issues (such as Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System) may yield more powerful results.

Authors

• Courtney A. Cuthbertson, Michigan State University

• Jason Parker, Michigan State University

• Scott Loveridge, Michigan State University

• Mark Skidmore, Michigan State University