A daily diary study into the effects on mental health of COVID-19 pandemic-related behaviors

Abstract

Background. Recommendations for promoting mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic include maintaining social contact, through virtual rather than physical contact, moderating substance/alcohol use, and limiting news and media exposure. We seek to understand if these pandemic-related behaviors impact subsequent mental health. Methods. Daily on-line survey data were collected on adults during May/June 2020. Measures were of daily physical and virtual (on-line) contact with others; substance and media use; and indices of psychological striving, struggling and COVID-related worry. Using random-intercept cross-lagged panel analysis, dynamic within-person cross-lagged effects were separated from more static individual differences. Results. 1148 participants completed daily surveys (657 [57.2%] females, 484 [42.1%] males; mean age 40.6 [SD 12.4] years). Daily increases in news consumed increased COVID-related worrying the next day (cross-lagged estimate=0.034 [95% CI 0.018 to 0.049], FDR adjusted p=0.00005) and vice versa (0.03 [0.012 to 0.048], FDR-adjusted p=0.0017). Increased media consumption also exacerbated subsequent psychological struggling (0.064 [0.03 to 0.098], FDRadjusted p=0.0005). There were no significant cross-lagged effects of daily changes in social distancing or virtual contact on later mental health.Conclusions. We delineate a cycle wherein daily increase in media consumption results in a subsequent increase in COVID-related worries, which in turn increases daily media consumption. Moreover, the adverse impact of news extended to broader measures of

Doomscrolling: Prospective associations between daily COVID news exposure, internalizing symptoms, and substance use among sexual and gender minority individuals assigned female at birth.

“…The association between COVID news exposure and depressed affect was unidirectional with COVID news exposure predicting increases in depressed affect, but depressed affect not prospectively predicting higher COVID news exposure. COVID news exposure did prospectively predict increased COVID distress and vice versa suggesting that associations between COVID news exposure and broad COVID-related distress are bidirectional, consistent with two recent daily diary studies (Schmidt et al, 2021; Shaw et al, 2021). This is concerning as such a bidirectional association may lead to the development of a cycle in which individuals who are experiencing distress about COVID seek out more COVID news, likely in an attempt to reduce ambiguity about aspects of the pandemic and distress.…”

“…These increases in news exposure were associated with concurrent increases in PTSD symptomology. In another study conducted early in the pandemic (May/June 2020), researchers found that higher news exposure (a blend of general and COVID-specific news) prospectively predicted increases in negative affect, but not positive affect (Shaw et al, 2021). Three daily diary studies have specifically examined associations between COVID news exposure and COVID anxiety, with one finding a concurrent association (Chu et al, 2021) and two demonstrating a bidirectional association (Schmidt et al, 2021;Shaw et al, 2021).…”

Life under stay-at-home orders: a panel study of change in social interaction and emotional wellbeing among older Americans during COVID-19 pandemic

“…With a larger network, one may receive more information about COVID and have more conversations about COVID. As COVID-related topics are repeatedly discussed and COVID worries are shared within the network, existing stress and worry may increase [ 38 , 49 ]. This may especially be the case at the beginning of the pandemic when there was a great amount of confusion, uncertainty, and anxiety in public messages about COVID.…”

“…We do not know, for example, whether social support stabilizes mental wellbeing, or exacerbates the fluctuations. To date, however, most of our knowledge about the pandemic's mental health impact come from cross-sectional studies [2,8,15,35], short-term observations over a few weeks at the beginning of the pandemic [1,16,[36][37][38], or before vs. during pandemic comparisons with limited follow-ups [3,18,19]. Repeated assessments of social interaction and mental health over longer periods of time are not widely available.…”

Dynamics of sadness by race, ethnicity, and income following George Floyd's death

“…This question is one of the two items in the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-2) and with this question, we aim to capture the core symptom of depression, since sadness or having a depressed mood is reflected in the diagnostic and statistical manual (DSM) as potential criteria for depression if persisting for more than two weeks ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ). Previous literature has also linked sadness to the construct of depression ( Mouchet-Mages and Baylé, 2008 ) and psychological struggle ( Shaw et al., 2021 ). While validity has not been assessed for this question as a single-item measure, the PHQ-2 has been shown to have strong construct validity and criterion validity and is generally regarded as a valid and accurate tool for screening, diagnosing, and monitoring major depression in the primary care population ( Arroll et al., 2010 ; Löwe et al., 2005 ).…”