# Exploring Self-Identified Counseling Expertise in Online Support Forums

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.12976 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12976/

## Key facts

- Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 6 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Jun 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Regularizing and Optimizing LSTM Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.02182/) (2017)
- [An Analysis of Neural Language Modeling at Multiple Scales](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.08240/) (2018)
- [Engagement Patterns of Peer-to-Peer Interactions on Mental Health Platforms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04999/) (2020)
- [Finding Your Voice: The Linguistic Development of Mental Health Counselors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.07194/) (2019)
- ["Trust me, I have a Ph.D.": A Propensity Score Analysis on the Halo Effect of Disclosing One's Offline Social Status in Online Communities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00105/) (2020)
- [Thousands of Positive Reviews: Distributed Mentoring in Online Fan Communities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.01425/) (2015)

## Built on by (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [Cognitive Reframing of Negative Thoughts through Human-Language Model Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.02466/) (2023)
- [Large Language Models in Mental Health Care: a Scoping Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02984/) (2024)
- [Task-Adaptive Tokenization: Enhancing Long-Form Text Generation Efficacy in Mental Health and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.05317/) (2023)
- [From Personas to Talks: Revisiting the Impact of Personas on LLM-Synthesized Emotional Support Conversations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.11451/) (2025)
- [Boosting Distress Support Dialogue Responses with Motivational Interviewing Strategy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10195/) (2023)
- [ESC-Eval: Evaluating Emotion Support Conversations in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14952/) (2024)
- [Mitigating Toxic Degeneration with Empathetic Data: Exploring the Relationship Between Toxicity and Empathy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.07233/) (2022)
- [Modeling Empathetic Alignment in Conversation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.00948/) (2024)
- [The Language of Trauma: Modeling Traumatic Event Descriptions Across Domains with Explainable AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.05977/) (2024)
- [Modeling Proficiency with Implicit User Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.08011/) (2021)

## Abstract (arXiv)

A growing number of people engage in online health forums, making it important to understand the quality of the advice they receive. In this paper, we explore the role of expertise in responses provided to help-seeking posts regarding mental health. We study the differences between (1) interactions with peers; and (2) interactions with self-identified mental health professionals. First, we show that a classifier can distinguish between these two groups, indicating that their language use does in fact differ. To understand this difference, we perform several analyses addressing engagement aspects, including whether their comments engage the support-seeker further as well as linguistic aspects, such as dominant language and linguistic style matching. Our work contributes toward the developing efforts of understanding how health experts engage with health information- and support-seekers in social networks. More broadly, it is a step toward a deeper understanding of the styles of interactions that cultivate supportive engagement in online communities.