ABSTRACT
Because mental health remains stigmatized in Bangladesh, we investigated the role of identity in supportive discourse in mental health support communities on Facebook pages and groups. The core logic of Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) was utilized to examine people’s language to get deep insights into their psychological states, including their sentiments, feeling styles, and social problems. Posts and comments from popular Facebook pages and groups on mental health in Bangladesh were analyzed. This chapter found that mental health support seekers prefer to remain anonymous in public virtual spaces than in private virtual spaces. People who used posts with a negative tone got more emotional support from Facebook pages and groups. Curiously, people who seek mental support on Facebook groups and pages are offered more religious support in a private group than in a public group. Furthermore, people reacted to more negative feedback on public pages than in private groups.
