%0 Conference Proceedings %T Tracking Mental Health Risks and Coping Strategies in Healthcare Workers’ Online Conversations Across the COVID-19 Pandemic %A Ireland, Molly %A Adams, Kaitlin %A Farrell, Sean %Y Zirikly, Ayah %Y Atzil-Slonim, Dana %Y Liakata, Maria %Y Bedrick, Steven %Y Desmet, Bart %Y Ireland, Molly %Y Lee, Andrew %Y MacAvaney, Sean %Y Purver, Matthew %Y Resnik, Rebecca %Y Yates, Andrew %S Proceedings of the Eighth Workshop on Computational Linguistics and Clinical Psychology %D 2022 %8 July %I Association for Computational Linguistics %C Seattle, USA %F ireland-etal-2022-tracking %X The mental health risks of the COVID-19 pandemic are magnified for medical professionals, such as doctors and nurses. To track conversational markers of psychological distress and coping strategies, we analyzed 67.25 million words written by self-identified healthcare workers (N = 5,409; 60.5% nurses, 40.5% physicians) on Reddit beginning in June 2019. Dictionary-based measures revealed increasing emotionality (including more positive and negative emotion and more swearing), social withdrawal (less affiliation and empathy, more “they” pronouns), and self-distancing (fewer “I” pronouns) over time. Several effects were strongest for conversations that were least health-focused and self-relevant, suggesting that long-term changes in social and emotional behavior are general and not limited to personal or work-related experiences. Understanding protective and risky coping strategies used by healthcare workers during the pandemic is fundamental for maintaining mental health among front-line workers during periods of chronic stress, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. %R 10.18653/v1/2022.clpsych-1.7 %U https://aclanthology.org/2022.clpsych-1.7 %U https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2022.clpsych-1.7 %P 76-88