Flattening the Mental Health Curve: COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Orders Are Associated With Alterations in Mental Health Search Behavior in the United States
Flattening the Mental Health Curve: COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Orders Are Associated With Alterations in Mental Health Search Behavior in the United States
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DOI：
10.2196/19347
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发表时间：
2020-06-01
影响因子：
5.2
通讯作者：
Barr, Paul J.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Jacobson, Nicholas C.;Lekkas, Damien;Barr, Paul J.
背景：冠状病毒病（COVID-19）导致全球人们的日常生活发生巨大变化。为对抗疫情，许多政府已实施社交距离、隔离及居家令。关于这种极端措施对心理健康的影响的研究有限。目的：本研究的目标是在全国范围内使用互联网搜索查询来检查呆在家里的命令是否会产生心理健康症状的差异变化。方法：在美国，各州在采取措施减少COVID-19传播方面存在差异;截至2020年3月23日，美国50个州中有11个州发布了居家令。在美国各地交错推出的居家措施使我们能够通过探索各州心理健康搜索查询的变化来调查这些措施是否会影响心理健康。本文研究了2020年3月16日至23日期间，每个州和华盛顿特区在谷歌上搜索心理健康查询的变化。具体而言，本文探讨了不同的变化，在心理健康搜索的基础上，搜索活动的模式，在这些州发布留在家里的命令相比，所有其他国家。参与者是在3月16日至23日期间在谷歌搜索心理健康术语的所有人。3月16日至23日期间，11个州接受了居家命令，以防止COVID-19的传播。结果包括测量焦虑、抑郁、强迫症、消极思想、易怒、疲劳、快感缺乏、注意力集中、失眠和自杀意念的搜索词。使用广义加性混合模型分析了超过1000万个搜索查询，结果表明，执行呆在家里的命令与自杀意念，焦虑，消极的想法，和睡眠障碍，与自杀意念和anxiety.Conclusions相关的最突出的扁平化：这些结果表明，尽管减少了社会接触，心理健康搜索查询迅速增加之前，发布留在家里的命令，这些变化消失后，宣布和颁布这些命令。虽然需要更多的研究来检查持续的影响，但这些结果表明，心理健康症状与发布呆在家里的命令后立即稳定有关。
Background: The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has led to dramatic changes worldwide in people's everyday lives. To combat the pandemic, many governments have implemented social distancing, quarantine, and stay-at-home orders. There is limited research on the impact of such extreme measures on mental health.Objective: The goal of this study was to examine whether stay-at-home orders produced differential changes in mental health symptoms using internet search queries on a national scale.Methods: In the United States, individual states vary in their adoption of measures to reduce the spread of COVID-19; as of March 23, 2020, 11 of the 50 states had issued stay-at-home orders. The staggered rollout of stay-at-home measures across the United States allows us to investigate whether these measures impact mental health by exploring variations in mental health search queries across the states. This paper examines the changes in mental health search queries on Google between March 16-23, 2020, across each state and Washington, DC. Specifically, this paper examines differential changes in mental health searches based on patterns of search activity following issuance of stay-at-home orders in these states compared to all other states. The participants were all the people who searched mental health terms in Google between March 16-23. Between March 16-23, 11 states underwent stay-at-home orders to prevent the transmission of COVID-19. Outcomes included search terms measuring anxiety, depression, obsessive-compulsive, negative thoughts, irritability, fatigue, anhedonia, concentration, insomnia, and suicidal ideation.Results: Analyzing over 10 million search queries using generalized additive mixed models, the results suggested that the implementation of stay-at-home orders are associated with a significant flattening of the curve for searches for suicidal ideation, anxiety, negative thoughts, and sleep disturbances, with the most prominent flattening associated with suicidal ideation and anxiety.Conclusions: These results suggest that, despite decreased social contact, mental health search queries increased rapidly prior to the issuance of stay-at-home orders, and these changes dissipated following the announcement and enactment of these orders. Although more research is needed to examine sustained effects, these results suggest mental health symptoms were associated with an immediate leveling off following the issuance of stay-at-home orders.