Health communication and adolescents: what do their emails tell us?

Background: It is widely known that barriers exist in communication between adolescents and health professionals. However, little is known about the actual language used by young people articulating such difficulties and whether email might allow them to overcome these problems.

Objectives: The aims of this study were to investigate concerns and difficulties relating to communication among adolescents seeking online health advice.

Methods: The study design was a corpus linguistic analysis of a million-word adolescent health email database based on 62 794 emails from young people requesting health advice from a prominent UK-hosted and doctor-led website.

Results: Young people reported various concerns about their health. They described numerous difficulties in disclosing such concerns to other people, in particular to parents and doctors. However, they readily expressed their concerns by email, displaying elevated levels of directness, particularly in relation to potentially sensitive or embarrassing topics.

Conclusion: Email has the potential to facilitate and supplement face-to-face consultations with health professionals. Increased adoption of email by health providers may be an efficient means of engaging with a generation often reluctant to access more traditional health care services and thus encourage them to enter the primary care setting more readily.