Perceived stress due to COVID-19 in Iran: Emphasizing the role of social networks

Abstract

Rising mortality rate due to Corona virus (COVID-19) has raised anxiety and panic among the Iranian community. This reaction to COVID-19 may cause harm to people and even lead to some implications which raise more concerns than the Coronavirus itself. Previous research has shown that receiving this stimulating news has the same effect as posttraumatic stress and depression. →What this article adds:This study showed that perceived stress due to COVID-19 in Iranian society was slightly high and receiving news and information from social networks has an impact on increasing perceived stress in the community.

Association between Perceived Trusted of COVID-19 Information Sources and Mental Health during the Early Stage of the Pandemic in Bangladesh

“…Many studies have already been conducted about the effects of trust in social media on people’s anxiety and stress levels. In nearly every case, anxiety and stress levels were associated with greater media consumption, and often with perceived trust [ 14 , 15 , 61 , 62 ]. The overloading of informational reading on social platforms (i.e., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter) can make people anxious during quarantine and isolation due to concerns about their family or friends being affected by the virus [ 63 ].…”

Tracking and analysis of discourse dynamics and polarity during the early Corona pandemic in Iran

“…We aimed to determine how the appropriate events and happenings affect the social discourse, discover and understand socio-cultural realities based on analyzing the prevailing attitude of the Iranian society towards the Corona issue, and their attention to scientific, religious, health and medical subjects. Previous studies have confirmed the large effect of social media on social awareness, mental health, and behavior after the outbreak [5] , [7] , [16] , [44] . One study found out that despite the stay-at-home orders issued by the organizations, the role of friends and families should be emphasized to promote compliance to the protocols [45] .…”

“…Contrary to that, in the last two months such words are among the most probable words of the corpus and cover over 40 and 60 percent, respectively. Though the gradual rise of miscellaneous topics may decrease the level of public stress caused by the social media contents [44] , as the social media mostly present personal opinions, the real condition of the disease may be neglected because of misinformation [16] caused by this considerable decrease in coronavirus-related topics. This may encourage people to escape to the safety of collective ignorance which reduces the compliance to protocols.…”

“…In early March, as Nowruz approaches, this topic again becomes the top-most important subject of corona-centered discourses. Heading towards the last days of the SH year, this topic may have become a source of stress caused by the disease [44] . Along with the advice to stay home, the situation has led to more people paying attention to prevention protocols resulting in a declining corona trend after two weeks, as reported by WHO.…”

A Predictive Study Between Anxiety and Fear of COVID-19 With Psychological Behavior Response: The Mediation Role of Perceived Stress

“…The findings of a study ( 88 ) showed that higher COVID-19 perceived stress was associated with more emotional distress including fear and anxiety. It has been indicated that perceived stress due to COVID-19 among the Iranian general population was slightly high, and it has been correlated with using social media ( 89 ). Previous studies have also shown that, in some cases, social media can increase the perceived risk of the outbreaks ( 90 ).…”