Psychosocial Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Large-scale Quasi-Experimental Study on Social Media

Abstract

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has caused several disruptions in personal and collective lives worldwide. The uncertainties surrounding the pandemic have also led to multifaceted mental health concerns, which can be exacerbated with precautionary measures such as social distancing and self-quarantining, as well as societal impacts such as economic downturn and job loss. Despite noting this as a “mental health tsunami”, the psychological effects of the COVID-19 crisis remain unexplored at scale. Consequently, public health stakeholders are currently limited in identifying ways to provide timely and tailored support during these circumstances. Objective Our study aims to provide insights regarding people’s psychosocial concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic by leveraging social media data. We aim to study the temporal and linguistic changes in symptomatic mental health and support expressions in the pandemic context. Methods We obtained about 60 million Twitter streaming posts originating from the United States from March 24 to May 24, 2020, and compared these with about 40 million posts from a comparable period in 2019 to attribute the effect of COVID-19 on people’s social media self-disclosure. Using these data sets, we studied people’s self-disclosure on social media in terms of symptomatic mental health concerns and expressions of support. We employed transfer learning classifiers that identified the social media language indicative of mental health outcomes (anxiety, depression, stress, and suicidal ideation) and support (emotional and informational support). We then examined the changes in psychosocial expressions over time and language, comparing the 2020 and 2019 data sets. Results We found that all of the examined psychosocial expressions have significantly increased during the COVID-19 crisis—mental health symptomatic expressions have increased by about 14%, and support expressions have increased by about 5%, both thematically related to COVID-19. We also observed a steady decline and eventual plateauing in these expressions during the COVID-19 pandemic, which may have been due to habituation or due to supportive policy measures enacted during this period. Our language analyses highlighted that people express concerns that are specific to and contextually related to the COVID-19 crisis. Conclusions We studied the psychosocial effects of the COVID-19 crisis by using social media data from 2020, finding that people’s mental health symptomatic and support expressions significantly increased during the COVID-19 period as compared to similar data from 2019. However, this effect gradually lessened over time, suggesting that people adapted to the circumstances and their “new normal.” Our linguistic analyses revealed that people expressed mental health concerns regarding personal and professional challenges, health care and precautionary measures, and pandemic-related awareness. This study shows the potential to provide insights to mental health care and stakeholders and policy makers in planning and implementing measures to mitigate mental health risks amid the health crisis.

COVID-19 Pandemic and Helsinki University Hospital Personnel Psychological Well-Being: Six-Month Follow-Up Results

“…Increase in Uusimaa area COVID-19 incidences appeared at the same time with lower self-reported psychological well-being and increase in sleeping problems among the cohort of our study (please see Figure 1 ), and a U-curve similar to our data was present in the self-reported stress symptoms of the Finnish general population ( Supplementary Figure S2 ). In the U.S., initial psychosocial emotional responses assessed via social media were followed by a plateau between March and May 2020, compared to spring 2019 [ 23 ], but the Finnish data demonstrate that a second Covid-19 wave can imply a second mental health hit to the population (i.e., habituation has limits and the timely situation matters a lot).…”

Twitter discourse reveals geographical and temporal variation in concerns about COVID-19 vaccines in the United States

“…The use of social media data is expanding exponentially due to its low barrier to entry [2] and has the potential to be harnessed to deliver precision public health communication that addresses dynamically changing misinformation and heterogenous belief systems across communities. During COVID-19, Twitter has been utilized to measure changes in mental health, [3] to identify misinformation, [4] study psychosocial effects, [5] and to uncover emerging symptoms. [6] In this paper, we study online discourse about the COVID-19 vaccine using Twitter to gain insight into variation across communities and over time.…”

Understanding Side Effects of Antidepressants: Large-scale Longitudinal Study on Social Media Data

“…In particular, the public-facing and microblogging-based design of Twitter (which is also the primary data set of our study) is known to enable candid self-disclosure and self-expressions of individuals, including on sensitive topics such as mental health and behavioral symptoms [ 20 , 21 ]. Twitter data were also recently leveraged to measure the psychosocial effects of COVID-19 [ 20 ]. Recent data and meta-reviews suggest that people are often more honest and may self-disclose more about mental health concerns and medications on social media than on other mediums [ 22 ].…”