During the outbreak of COVID-19, information on the epidemic inundated people’s lives and led to negative emotions (e.g., tension, anxiety, and fear) in many people. This study aims to explore the effect of various emotions on prosocial tendencies during the COVID-19 outbreak and the moderating effect of the severity of the epidemic. We explore these effects by conducting a text analysis of the content of posts by 387,730 Weibo users. The results show that the severity of the epidemic promotes prosocial tendencies; anger motivates prosocial tendencies significantly; and the severity of the epidemic moderates the effects of three emotions—anger, sadness, and surprise—on prosocial tendencies. These findings provide a reference for exploring the positive significance of major disasters.

Objective: This paper provides a systematic review and meta-analysis on the prevalence rate of mental health issues of the major population, including general population, general healthcare workers (HCWs), and frontline healthcare workers (HCWs), in China over one year of the COVID-19 crisis. Design: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Data sources: articles in PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and medRxiv up to November 16, 2020, one year after the first publicly known confirmed COVID-19 case. Eligibility criteria and data analysis: any COVID-19 and mental disorders relevant English studies with frontline/general healthcare workers, general adult population sample, using validated scales. We pooled data using random-effects meta-analyses to estimate the prevalence rates of anxiety, depression, distress, general psychological symptoms (GPS), insomnia, and PTSD and ran meta-regression to tease out the heterogeneity. Results: The meta-analysis includes 131 studies and 171 independent samples. The overall prevalence of anxiety, depression, distress, GPS, insomnia, and PTSD are 11%, 13%, 20%, 13%, 19%, and 20%, respectively. The meta-regression results uncovered several predictors of the prevalence rates, including severity (e.g., above severe vs. above moderate, p<0.01; above moderate vs. above mild, p<0.01) and type of mental issues (e.g., depression vs. anxiety, p=0.04; insomnia vs. anxiety p=0.04), population (frontline HCWs vs. general HCWs, p<0.01), sampling location (Wuhan vs. non-Wuhan, p=0.04), and study quality (p=0.04). Limitations: First, we only focus on China population, which may limit the generalizability of the results. Second, 96.2% studies included in this meta-analysis were cross-sectional. Last, since we only included studies published in English, we expect to have a language bias. Conclusion: Our pooled prevalence rates are significantly different from, yet largely between, the findings of previous meta-analyses, suggesting the results of our larger study are consistent with, yet fine-tune, the findings of the smaller, previous meta-analyses. Hence, this meta-analysis not only provides a significant update on the mental health prevalence rates in COVID-19 but also suggests the need to update meta-analyses continuously to provide more accurate estimates of the prevalence of mental illness during this ongoing health crisis. While prior meta-analyses focused on the prevalence rates of mental health disorders based on one level of severity (i.e., above mild), our findings also suggest a need to examine the prevalence rates at varying levels of severity. The one-year cumulative evidence on sampling locations (Wuhan vs. non-Wuhan) corroborates the typhoon eye effect theory. Our finding that the prevalence rates of distress and insomnia and those of frontline healthcare workers are higher suggest future research and interventions should pay more attention to those mental outcomes and populations. Keywords: systematic review; meta-analysis; COVID-19; mental health; epidemic; general population; healthcare workers; frontline healthcare workers

Post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSSs) have been a common negative psychological response during the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous theories emphasized the unique effects of cognitive and family factors on PTSSs and overlooked their combined role, which suggested that the mechanisms underlying PTSSs were not fully understood. To fill this gap, this study aimed to examine the associations between attention to negative information, blaming others, parent-child relationship and PTSSs, as well as the combined role of these factors on PTSSs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, 1153 college students completed self-report questionnaires. Results indicated that attention to negative information increased PTSSs, both directly and via blaming others. Moreover, parent-child relationship buffered both the exacerbating effect of attention to negative information on blaming others and the effect of blaming others on worsening PTSSs. The current study integrates existing theories, expands the field of trauma research through considering the effect of cognitive and family factors on PTSSs, and provides theoretical support for interventions to relieve PTSSs.

Family function reflects the operating status of the family system, which plays a vital role in children’s mental health. The current meta-analysis examined the association between family function and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in children and adolescents for the first time. Studies published from 1980 to 2021 were identified via searching and screening. We identified 31 studies (91 unique effects) with 8,684 children. A three-level meta-analysis revealed that overall family function was negatively associated with PTSD ( r = −0.205). Among elements of family function, family affect ( r = −0.251), communication ( r = −0.221), and cohesion ( r = −0.184) were associated with less PTSD, whereas family conflict ( r = 0.228) was associated with more PTSD in children. Family flexibility ( r = −0.103) was not associated with PTSD. Moderator analyses revealed differences between various types of trauma events and family function scales. The findings highlight the differences in the roles of the elements of family function and suggest that interventions should be focused on targeting specific elements of family function.