Introduction

This chapter begins by defining the concept of social support and examining the situations of people suffering from anxiety and/or depression in different countries. It discusses the potential advantages and drawbacks of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and argues that computer users can exercise agency to effectively utilize various social media platforms. The chapter reviews previous research that recognized the therapeutic effect of online support groups which offer a variety of social support to people with mental illnesses. Next, digging deeper into the relationship between social support and mental health, this chapter examines studies that outline how (online) social support contributes to alleviating people's emotional instability and mental disorders from social and psychological perspectives. This chapter argues that very little research has investigated in detailed examples how language use contributes to communicating social support from a discourse analytic perspective.