Mental healthcare-seeking behavior of women in Bangladesh: content analysis of a social media platform

BACKGROUND: Mental health remains a highly stigmatized area of healthcare, and people often conceal their concerns rather than seek assistance or treatment. The Women Support Initiative Forum (WSIF) is a social media platform established in 2018 to provide expert and peer-led psychosocial support services to women of all ages in Bangladesh. The anonymous nature of the forum means that mental health concerns can be aired without fear of identification. METHOD: A content analysis was conducted on the anonymous posts retrieved from the WSIF platform between 8(th) March 2020 and 7(th) July 2022. Around 1457 posts were initially selected for analysis which was reduced to 1006 after removing duplicates and non-relevant posts, such as queries about the addresses of the doctors and other non-mental health-related issues. A thematic analysis of the data was conducted using an inductive approach. RESULT: The 1006 posts generated four themes and nine sub-themes. All the women mentioned mental health symptoms (n = 1006; 100%). Most also mentioned reasons for seeking mental healthcare (n = 818; 81.31%), healthcare-seeking behavior (n = 667; 66.30%), and barriers to seeking mental healthcare (n = 552; 54.87%). The majority of women described symptoms of stress, depression, and anxiety-like symptoms, which were aggregated under common mental health conditions. Mental health symptoms were ascribed to various external influences, including marital relationship, intrafamilial abuse, and insecurities related to the COVID-19 pandemic. A large proportion of posts were related to women seeking information about mental healthcare services and service providers (psychologists or psychiatrists). The analysis found that most women did not obtain mental healthcare services despite their externalized mental health symptoms. The posts identified clear barriers to women accessing mental health services, including low mental health literacy, the stigma associated with mental healthcare-seeking behavior, and the poor availability of mental health care services. CONCLUSION: The study revealed that raising mass awareness and designing culturally acceptable evidence-based interventions with multisectoral collaborations are crucial to ensuring better mental healthcare coverage for women in Bangladesh. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12888-022-04414-z.