Unveiling Regional Sentiment Shifts: Deep Learning and Explainable NLP in Reddit Mental Health Posts (UK and Ireland)

Bhatnagar, Shivansh (2025) Unveiling Regional Sentiment Shifts: Deep Learning and Explainable NLP in Reddit Mental Health Posts (UK and Ireland). Masters thesis, Dublin, National College of Ireland.

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Abstract

This paper discusses the variation in emotional distress manifestation on Reddit in the United Kingdom and Ireland between prior to and post-covid-19. AI, NLP, and statistical learning were used to collect, clean, and analyze posts that were performed with a mixed manual/automated sentiment labeling process, with feature engineering. The problem of imbalances in sentiment and location was overcome by using SMOTE to provide balanced results. The methods of explainable AI (SHAP, LIME) helped the transparency whereas LDA found significant themes. The most accurate classification model scored 86% F1. Using auto ARIMA forecasting, an 18% sustained growth in distress-related messages in the post-pandemic era was estimated. providing real-world advice to mental health professionals and researchers on how to use advanced NLP and explainable AI to get real-time measurements of the overall sentiment and analyze the emotions and feelings associated with a given topic in the population.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Supervisors:	Name Email Milosavljevic, Vladimir UNSPECIFIED
Subjects:	Q Science > QH Natural history > QH301 Biology > Methods of research. Technique. Experimental biology > Data processing. Bioinformatics > Artificial intelligence Q Science > Q Science (General) > Self-organizing systems. Conscious automata > Artificial intelligence P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics > Computational linguistics. Natural language processing R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA790 Mental Health Z Bibliography. Library Science. Information Resources > ZA Information resources > ZA4150 Computer Network Resources > The Internet > World Wide Web > Websites > Online social networks T Technology > TK Electrical engineering. Electronics. Nuclear engineering > Telecommunications > The Internet > World Wide Web > Websites > Online social networks
Divisions:	School of Computing > Master of Science in Data Analytics
Depositing User:	Ciara O'Brien
Date Deposited:	25 Aug 2026 11:26
Last Modified:	25 Aug 2026 11:26
URI:	https://norma.ncirl.ie/id/eprint/9622

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