The effect of government COVID-19 containment measures on mental health in China

Jingwei Huang and Wei Zheng

Chapter Chapter 8 in Handbook on Inequality and COVID-19, 2025, pp 119-133 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: As the COVID fatality rate fell, China persisted with a “zero-COVID” policy in 2021 and 2022. The restrictions imposed under this “quiet-down” policy may have led to different mental health consequences compared to the lock-down measures in 2020, when people’s fear of the unknown virus was heightened by a lack of vaccines and treatments. By using the Baidu Index of mental health keywords and variation in the timing of the implementation of the 2021 and 2022 quiet-down policy across the 31 capital cities in China, we find a significant increase in searches related to mental health, including insomnia, fear, anger, depression, sadness, and anxiety. However, in contrast with a significant increase in keyword searches for the term suicide during the lock-down period in 2020, we see no significant surge in suicide-related searches following the implementation of the quiet-down policy. This implies that the most severe indication of mental health issues lessened, while less severe ones increased. The findings suggest that the less severe types of worry under the quiet-down policy better reflect the restrictive measures since widespread vaccination reduced fatality rates of virus variants that emerged in the later stages of the pandemic.

Keywords: Mental health; COVID-19; Lock down; Online search frequency; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035302758
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