ArticleJournal of medical Internet research2023
Evaluating the Impact of Mask Mandates and Political Party Affiliation on Mental Health Internet Search Behavior in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Generalized Additive Mixed Model Framework.
Article in Journal of medical Internet research, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Online Health Information Seeking and Preventative Health Actions: Cross-Generational Online Survey Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Article
- Effects of cold and hot temperatures on the renal function of people with chronic disease.Journal of occupational health · 2024Article
- Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19): Lessons Learned Impact on the Education of Health Professionals.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2024Article
- Detecting Longitudinal Trends between Passively Collected Phone Use and Anxiety among College Students.Digital biomarkersArticle
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundThe impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health worldwide and in the United States have been well documented. However, there is limited research examining the long-term effects of the pandemic on mental health, particularly in relation to pervasive policies such as statewide mask mandates and political party affiliation.
objectiveThe goal of this study was to examine whether statewide mask mandates and political party affiliations yielded differential changes in mental health symptoms across the United States by leveraging state-specific internet search query data.
methodsThis study leveraged Google search queries from March 24, 2020, to March 29, 2021, in each of the 50 states in the United States. Of the 50 states, 39 implemented statewide mask mandates-with 16 of these states being Republican-to combat the spread of COVID-19. This study investigated whether mask mandates were associated differentially with mental health in states with and without mandates by exploring variations in mental health search queries across the United States. In addition, political party affiliation was examined as a potential covariate to determine whether mask mandates had differential associations with mental health in Republican and Democratic states. Generalized additive mixed models were implemented to model associations among mask mandates, political party affiliation, and mental health search volume for up to 7 months following the implementation of a mask mandate.
resultsThe results of generalized additive mixed models revealed that search volume for "restless" significantly increased following a mask mandate across all states, whereas the search volume for "irritable" and "anxiety" increased and decreased, respectively, following a mandate for Republican states in comparison with Democratic states. Most mental health search terms did not exhibit significant changes in search volume in relation to mask mandate implementation.
conclusionsThese findings suggest that mask mandates were associated nonlinearly with significant changes in mental health search behavior, with the most notable associations occurring in anxiety-related search terms. Therefore, policy makers should consider monitoring and providing additional support for these mental health symptoms following the implementation of public health-related mandates such as mask mandates. Nevertheless, these results do not provide evidence for an overwhelming impact of mask mandates on population-level mental health in the United States.
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