ArticleSpanish journal of psychiatry and mental health
COVID-19 pandemic and mental health in Spain: An analysis of their relationship using Google Trends.
Article in Spanish journal of psychiatry and mental health. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Observational
- Promises and Pitfalls of Internet Search Data in Mental Health: Critical Review.JMIR mental health · 2025Review
- Article
- Increasing public concern on insomnia during the COVID-19 outbreak in China: An info-demiology study.Heliyon · 2022Article
- COVID-19's impact on interest in gastrointestinal topics.Environmental science and pollution research international · 2022Article
- Article
- Usefulness of a Mobile Application (Mentali) for Anxiety and Depression Screening in Medical Students and Description of the Associated Triggering Factors.Brain sciences · 2022Article
- Psychological Health Conditions and COVID-19-Related Stressors Among University Students: A Repeated Cross-Sectional Survey.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
introductionThis study aims to examine the public interest that exists on Internet regarding various mental health topics and its relationship with evolution of COVID-19 pandemic in Spain. MATERIALS AND
methodsGoogle Trends was used to explore relative search volume (RSV) for the following terms related with mental health (TRMH): "anxiety", "depression", "stress", "insomnia" and "suicide"; between January and December 2020. The cross-correlation function was performed to assess association between new COVID-19 cases and RSV levels for TRMH. Finally, Mann-Whitney test was used to examine differences between RSV values for TRMH before and after of state of alarm declarations on March and October 2020.
resultsThe "anxiety" term showed the highest RSV indices. A significant correlation was found between new COVID-19 cases and RSV for "anxiety" with a time-lag of +1 week (r=0.49; p<.05). Was found an increase of SRV for "anxiety" (U=0.00; p=.01) and a decrease of SRV for "depression" (U=1.00; p=.04) between 4-week period before and after state of alarm of March 2020. Regarding the state of alarm of October 2020, a higher RSV for "anxiety" (U=0.50; p=.02) was found in the four weeks after it compared with a similar previous period.
conclusionsAnxiety is the mental health topic of greatest public interest on Internet in context of COVID-19 pandemic. Public concern about anxiety rises one week after the increase in COVID-19 cases and is greater after introduction of control measures that entail any type of mobility restriction or activity limitation. There is a greater general need for information on anxiety at specific times in the pandemic evolution.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.