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Mental health problems and social media exposure during COVID-19 outbreak

Junling Gao, Pinpin Zheng, Yingnan Jia and 6 more

PLOS ONE · 2020 · CC BY

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0231924

Abstract

Background: Huge citizens expos social media during a novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbroke in Wuhan, China. We assess the prevalence of mental health problems and examine their association with social media exposure. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study among Chinese citizens aged ≥18 years old during Jan 31 to Feb 2, 2019. Online survey was used to do rapid assessment. Total of 4872 participants from 31 provinces and autonomous regions were involved in the current study. Besides demographics and social media exposure (SME), depression was assessed by The Chinese version of WHO-Five Well-Being Index (WHO-5) and anxiety was assessed by Chinese version of generalized anxiety disorder scale (GAD-7). multivariable logistic regressions were used to identify associations between social media exposure with mental health problems after controlling for covariates. Findings: The prevalence of depression, anxiety and combination of depression and anxiety (CDA) was 48.3% (95%CI: 46.9%-49.7%), 22.6% (95%CI: 21.4%-23.8%) and 19.4% (95%CI: 18.3%-20.6%) during COVID-19 outbroke in Wuhan, China. More than 80% (95%CI:80.9%-83.1%) of participants reported frequently exposed to social media. After controlling for covariates, frequently SME was positively associated with high odds of anxiety (OR=1.72, 95%CI: 1.31-2.26) and CDA (OR=1.91, 95%CI: 1.52-2.41) compared with less SME. Interpretation: Our findings show there are high prevalence of mental health problems, which positively associated with frequently SME during the COVID-19 outbreak. These findings implicated the government need pay more attention to mental health problems, especially depression and anxiety among general population and combating with “infodemic” while combating during public health emergency.Funding Statement: National key R&D Program of China (grant no. 2018YFC2002000 & 2018YFC2002001) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 71573048).Declaration of Interests: The authors declare no competing interests.Ethics Approval Statement: This study has been approved by the Institutional Review Board of Fudan University, School of Public Health (IRB#2020-01-0800).

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