ArticleJournal of affective disorders2021
Is Google Trends a useful tool for tracking mental and social distress during a public health emergency? A time-series analysis.
Article in Journal of affective disorders, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed.
- Predicting Suicide Attempt Trends in Youth: A Machine Learning Analysis Using Google Trends and Historical Data.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- Rethinking suicide related searches and their association with suicide rates, attempts, and self harm hospitalisation.NPJ digital medicine · 2025Article
- Google search interests and new cases of COVID-19 in Bangladesh: a vector autoregression analysis for disease surveillance.BMC research notes · 2025Article
- Promises and Pitfalls of Internet Search Data in Mental Health: Critical Review.JMIR mental health · 2025Review
- Dynamic patterns of healthy lifestyle awareness after COVID-19: a study using Google Trends and joinpoint regression.Frontiers in big data · 2025Article
- Changes to Public Health Surveillance Methods Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Scoping Review.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2024Article
- Tracking online searches for gambling activities and operators in the United Kingdom during the COVID-19 pandemic: A Google Trends™ analysis.Journal of behavioral addictions · 2023Article
- Association Between Internet Searches Related to Suicide/Self-harm and Adolescent Suicide Death in South Korea in 2016-2020: Secondary Data Analysis.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Article
- Depression and Anxiety on Twitter During the COVID-19 Stay-At-Home Period in 7 Major U.S. Cities.AJPM focus · 2023Article
- Google Trends for health research: Its advantages, application, methodological considerations, and limitations in psychiatric and mental health infodemiology.Frontiers in big data · 2023Review
- Estimation of Lockdowns' Impact on Well-Being in Selected Countries: An Application of Novel Bayesian Methods and Google Search Queries Data.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Explanation of hand, foot, and mouth disease cases in Japan using Google Trends before and during the COVID-19: infodemiology study.BMC infectious diseases · 2022Article
- What's hot and what's not in lay psychology: Wikipedia's most-viewed articles.Current psychology (New Brunswick, N.J.) · 2022Article
- Trends of Internet Search Volumes for Major Depressive Disorder Symptoms During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Korea: An Interrupted Time-Series Analysis.Journal of Korean medical science · 2022Article
- Article
- Machine learning prediction of suicide attempt counts in Poland: Insights from Google trends and historical data.International journal of clinical and health psychology : IJCHPArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundGoogle Trends data are increasingly used by researchers as an indicator of population mental health, but few studies have investigated the validity of this approach during a public health emergency.
methodsRelative search volumes (RSV) for the topics depression, anxiety, self-harm, suicide, suicidal ideation, loneliness, and abuse were obtained from Google Trends. We used graphical and time-series approaches to compare daily trends in searches for these topics against population measures of these outcomes recorded using validated self-report scales (PHQ-9; GAD-7; UCLA-3) in a weekly survey (n = ~70,000) of the impact COVID-19 on psychological and social experiences in the UK population (21/03/2020 to 21/08/ 2020).
resultsSelf-reported levels of depression, anxiety, self-harm/suicidal ideation, self-harm, loneliness and abuse decreased during the period studied. There was no evidence of an association between self-reported anxiety, self-harm, abuse and RSV on Google Trends. Trends in Google topic RSV for depression and suicidal ideation were inversely associated with self-reports of these outcomes (p = 0.03 and p = 0.04, respectively). However, there was statistical and graphical evidence that self-report and Google searches for loneliness (p < 0.001) tracked one another. LIMITATIONS: No age/sex breakdown of Google Trends data available. Survey respondents were not representative of the UK population and no pre-pandemic data were available.
conclusionGoogle Trends data do not appear to be a useful indicator of changing levels of population mental health during a public health emergency, but may have some value as an indicator of loneliness.
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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.