The Coping Strategy of Mental Health Survivors in YouTube Community: Corpus-Based Analysis

Abstract

This study aims to analyze the coping strategy used by mental health survivors in their recovery narratives. Using Lazarus and Folkman’s (1986) coping mechanism theory and a corpus of mental-health recovery narrative related videos on YouTube, we analyzed the preposition “to” as it frequently co-occurs with nouns and verbs that
reveal survivors’ coping strategies. Using concordance analysis, we found that mental health survivors focused on dealing with their problems through social assistance or seeking social support. At the same time, some narrative also reflects avoidance or withdrawal as a strategy to manage emotions and stress. This indicates that the role of
social is vital to support the recovery process while also showing that avoidance efforts made by mental health survivors when they experience limitations in dealing their stressors.