Anxiety symptoms increased through the pandemic, Google Trends show
New research found that in the usa, Google searches for ‘worry,’ ‘anxiety,’ and therapeutic ways to manage worry and anxiety have increased through the pandemic.
The study, featuring as a commentary in the journal Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, highlights the responsibility the COVID-19 pandemic has placed not only on people’s physical health but also their mental health.
COVID-19 and mental health
COVID-19 has already established a profound influence on people. The world is approaching one million recorded deaths from the condition. And, some of these who recovered from the initial virus effects continue steadily to suffer long-term symptoms that are yet to be fully understood.
Once the knock-on effects of the disease factor in - for example, overwhelmed critical care units prolonging treatment times for folks with other serious illnesses - then it really is clear that the pandemic has already established a devastating effect on people’s health all over the world.
However, as well as people’s physical health, it is also becoming clear that the pandemic is substantially affecting their mental health.
Early in the pandemic, there have been anecdotal reports that people’s mental health was worsening, including those with pre-existing mental medical issues and the ones whose mental health was normally well. As time has gone on, more research has began to corroborate these reports.
Google Trends
In today's study, the researchers wished to explore an alternative method of deciding the pandemic’s effects on mental health: analyzing Google search requests.
Google Trends allows one to see the search terms that persons use for various populations, globally and locally. As Dr. Michael Hoerger, Assistant Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Tulane University Cancer Center, New Orleans, and his co-authors note:
“Although in no way a ‘window into the soul,’ people’s search conditions reflect relatively uncensored desires for information and therefore lack lots of the biases of traditional self-report surveys.”
Previous health science research has made make use of Google Trends data in studies, and today's study’s investigators wished to see how effective it may be in the context of mental health in today's pandemic.
To do this, they accessed weekly U.S. search conditions from April 21, 2019 to April 21, 2020.
Worry and anxiety searches increased
By comparing the pre- and post-pandemic search terms, the researchers could actually identify four relevant themes.
Firstly, following announcement of the pandemic, search terms related to ‘worry’ more than doubled. These conditions included ‘worry,’ ‘worry health,’ ‘panic,’ and ‘hysteria.’
Secondly, persons shifted to looking for anxiety symptoms, which spiked following the initial flurry of worry-related keyphrases.
Thirdly, the researchers did not see a significant upsurge in other mental health keyphrases, such as for example depression, loneliness, suicidal ideation, or drug abuse.
Instead of interpreting this to suggest that these issues did not increase, the authors speculate that people’s searches associated with these issues might occur later, or that they might be better at utilizing self-care techniques concerning these.
Finally, the researchers pointed out that not only did persons understandably seek out more online therapy instead of face-to-face therapy, in addition they searched for therapy approaches for dealing with anxiety symptoms.
Users did so with search conditions such as for example ‘deep breathing’ and ‘body scan meditation'.
Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com
