Understanding Remote Mental Health Supporters' Help-Seeking in Online Communities

Providing mental health support for loved ones across a geographic distance creates unique challenges for the remote caregivers, who sometimes turn to online communities for peer support. We qualitatively analyzed 522 Reddit threads to understand what drives remote caregivers' online help-seeking behaviors and the responses they receive from the community. Their purposes of posting included requesting guidance, expressing emotions, and seeking validation. Community responses included providing emotional support, suggesting informational strategies, and sharing personal experiences. While certain themes in posts (emotional toll, monitoring symptoms, and prioritizing caregiver well-being) are shared across remote and non-remote contexts, remote caregivers' posts surfaced nuanced experiences. For example, they often rely on digital cues, such as voice, to interpret care receivers' well-being while struggling with digital silence during crises. We discuss the need for supporting communication and information sharing between remote caregivers and receivers, care coordination for crisis management, and design recommendations for caregiver communities.