Relationship between eHealth literacy and psychological status during COVID‐19 pandemic: A survey of Chinese residents

Abstract

Aims To investigate the eHealth literacy and the psychological status of Chinese residents during the COVID‐19 pandemic and explore their interrelationship. Background The COVID‐19 outbreak has placed intense psychological pressure on community residents. Their psychological status may be affected by eHealth literacy due to home isolation during this rampant pandemic. Methods This is a Web‐based cross‐sectional survey conducted on the JD Health platform, which resulted in 15,000 respondents having participated in this survey. The eHealth Literacy Questionnaire (EHLQ), Patient Health Questionnaire‐9 (PHQ‐9), Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) and Impact of Event Scale‐Revised (IES‐R) were used. The Pearson correlation was used to analyse the relationship between eHealth literacy and depression, insomnia and post‐traumatic stress disorder. Results The score of eHealth literacy was 48.88 ± 8.46, and 11.4%, 6.8% and 20.1% of respondents experienced moderate to severe depression, insomnia and post‐traumatic stress disorder. eHealth literacy negatively correlated with depression ( r = −0.331), insomnia ( r = −0.366) and post‐traumatic stress disorder ( r = −0.320). Conclusion eHealth literacy is closely related to psychological status. Improving eHealth literacy may contribute to maintaining good psychological well‐being. Implications for Nursing Management It is necessary to strengthen the education of primary health care providers to enhance their ability to help community residents effectively use eHealth information.

Effect of e-Health Literacy on COVID-19 Infection-Preventive Behaviors of Undergraduate Students Majoring in Healthcare

“…It combines health literacy with digital literacy and indicates the ability to screen health information available online and to interpret and assess the information obtained [12]. e-HL is a key factor affecting infection-preventive behaviors related to COVID-19 [13] and psychological status [14]. Its importance has grown continuously with the increasing amount of information available online.…”

Internet use, eHealth literacy and fear of COVID-19 among nursing students in the Philippines

“…The rapid development of COVID-19 provokes a need to consider the disease's epidemiological facets and the impact of the pandemic on mental health and psychological well-being. Due to the novelty of the virus and several challenges of the pandemic (Yang et al, 2020), one of the immediate consequences among individuals worldwide is fear related to contracting the virus (Ahorsu et al, 2020;Nguyen et al, 2020;Satici et al, 2020) or coronaphobia (Arora et al, 2020). Unfortunately, a very high level of fear is disabling and maladaptive contributing to mass anxiety, depression, and psychological distress (Hossain et al, 2020;Mertens et al, 2020;Rahman et al, 2020;Saravanan et al, 2020;Satici et al, 2020).…”

“…The Internet turns to be a doubleedged sword for the people facing this virus (Xu et al, 2020). While the Internet and social media have become essential channels to disseminate facts about the outbreak (Király et al, 2020;Yang et al, 2020) and even help predict preventive behaviors for COVID-19 transmission (Li & Liu, 2020), it also carries a risk of rapidly spreading false information that may result to heightened fear. Undoubtedly, the COVID-19 infodemic has generated a complex online environment for people to effectively acquire valuable and reliable health information (Chong et al, 2020).…”

“…Undoubtedly, the COVID-19 infodemic has generated a complex online environment for people to effectively acquire valuable and reliable health information (Chong et al, 2020). To add, the considerable volume of information on the Internet has placed high demands on individual's ability to search, obtain, understand, and screen information to address or solve a health problem (Yang et al, 2020). Therefore, it is essential to study the possible association of Internet use and eHealth literacy on the development of fear of COVID-19 among nursing students.…”

“…Although there is a rapidly growing research regarding emotional responses and the psychological impact of COVID-19, much of the current published studies were conducted internationally, particularly in China (e.g., Cao et al, 2020;Huang et al, 2020;Yang et al, 2020). Additionally, most of the studies regarding fear of COVID-19 focused on the psychometric evaluation of the scale to assess fear of COVID-19 in different populations (e.g., Caycho-Rodríguez et al, 2020;Pang et al, 2020;Perz et al, 2020;Reznik et al, 2020;Soraci al., 2020).…”