Relation between characteristics of confinement during COVID-19 and Google searches of mental health concepts.

Research studies associations between lockdown stringency and duration of confinement with Google searches for mental health terms during the pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a global public health crisis. As a result, stringent containment measures were implemented in many countries to control contagion. Despite the need to implement these measures for the welfare and health protection of world`s population, it was a major disruption to people´s lives.

Given this disruption in everyday life, Pablo de la Rosa and collaborators launched a research study in order to explore the impact of the publich health crisis on the mental health of the population. To do this, they wanted to know the association between the lockdowns stringency and dutarion with Google searchers for mental heath terms such as “anxiety”, “depression”, “suicide” and “mental health” during the confinement in different countries

Google Trends and Global Pandemic Policy Panel Database help them to estimate of  the relative search volume for mental health terms during the lockdown. The results show a negative association between stringency and duration of confinement whith searches for suggested terms. School closure is the only confinement policy with a positive association with searches for “depression”.

It is suggested that the negative associations between stringency and duration of lockdown with Google searches for mental health concepts may be due to a welfare and public good consideration of confinement by the population. Some results are in line with previous litearutre linking a decrease in searches for mental health terms with the onset of confinement. Still, further research of this that type take into account for covariates of vaccination or the rise of new SARS-CoV-2 variants in the association between measures of confinement with Google searches for mental health controlling terms are needed.

Original paper: de la Rosa, P, A., Cowden, R. G., de Filippis, R., Jerotic, S., Nahidi, M., Ori, D., Orsolini, L., Nagendrappa, S., Pinto da costa, M., Ransing, R., Saeed, F., Shoib, S., Turan, S., Ullah, I., Vadivel, R., y Ramalho, R. (2022). Associations of lockdown stringency and duration with Google searches for mental health terms during the COVID-19 pandemic: A nine-country study. Journal of psychiatric research, 150, 237-245.