Utilizing YouTube as platform for psychiatric emergency patient outreach in Chinese Americans

Chinese Americans significantly underutilize mental health resources, which leads to delayed diagnosis, suboptimal management, and can be contributing to the large number of psychiatric emergencies seen in the ED. The goal of this study is to understand the role of using YouTube as a platform for psychiatric emergency outreach among Chinese Americans.

We posted three videos about psychiatric emergencies in Cantonese on YouTube. We collected viewing data during a five-year period. The recorded parameters include watch time, number of views, average view duration, traffic source, search terms, and watch device type.

The videos generated 40,608 min of watch time and 5976 views, with an average view duration of 6.80 min. The top three traffic sources are YouTube suggested videos, direct YouTube search, and browse features. The three most used viewing devices are mobile phones (25,068 min of watch time, 3491 views, and 7.18 min of average view duration), computer/TV (9222 min of watch time, 1717 views, and 5.37 min of average view duration), and tablets (6318 min of watch time, 768 views, and 8.23 min of average view duration).

Majority of the viewers used mobile phones, and mobile phones and tablets had significantly longer average view durations as compared to computer/TV. YouTube and wireless devices may have potential as internet based psychiatric emergency outreach platform. This study calls for further research to explore the effectiveness of using social media and wireless devices for psychiatric emergency education prior to ED arrival, particularly in minority populations with cultural barriers to health care.