What Do Veterans Discuss the Most about Post-Combat Stress on Social Media? – A Text Analytics Study

Abstract: Army veterans who transition out of the military often face substantial challenges during their transition to civilian life. One such challenge transitioning veterans may go through is encountering post-combat stress. Since the gruesome attacks on 9/11, nearly 30,177 US veterans have committed suicide, and one of the major reasons behind this is the post-combat stress endured by the veterans (Suitt, 2021). Combat stress is a common response to the mental and emotional strain resulting from dangerous and traumatic experiences. In this study, we have used advanced text analytics techniques to understand and analyze veterans’ attitudes while discussing post-combat trauma on social media. Our analysis is split into two parts. In part one, we measured the polarity score of social media posts of veterans to understand the sentiments. In part two, we used topic modeling to understand the significant aspects veterans discuss about post-combat stress on social media.