Mental Health Interest and Its Prediction during the COVID-19 Pandemic Using Google Trends

Magdalena Sycińska-Dziarnowska, Liliana Szyszka-Sommerfeld, Karolina Kłoda, Michele Simeone, Krzysztof Woźniak and Gianrico Spagnuolo
Additional contact information
Magdalena Sycińska-Dziarnowska: Department of Orthodontics, Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, 70-111 Szczecin, Poland
Liliana Szyszka-Sommerfeld: Department of Orthodontics, Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, 70-111 Szczecin, Poland
Karolina Kłoda: MEDFIT Karolina Kłoda, 71-050 Szczecin, Poland
Michele Simeone: Department of Neurosciences, Reproductive and Odontostomatological Sciences, University of Naples “Federico II”, 80131 Napoli, Italy
Krzysztof Woźniak: Department of Orthodontics, Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, 70-111 Szczecin, Poland
Gianrico Spagnuolo: Department of Neurosciences, Reproductive and Odontostomatological Sciences, University of Naples “Federico II”, 80131 Napoli, Italy

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 23, 1-14

Abstract: This study aimed to analyze and predict interest in mental health-related queries created in Google Trends (GT) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Google Trends tool collected data on the Google search engine interest and provided real-time surveillance. Five key phrases: “depression”, “insomnia”, ”loneliness”, “psychologist”, and “psychiatrist”, were studied for the period from 25 September 2016 to 19 September 2021. The predictions for the upcoming trend were carried out for the period from September 2021 to September 2023 and were estimated by a hybrid five-component model. The results show a decrease of interest in the search queries “depression” and “loneliness” by 15.3% and 7.2%, respectively. Compared to the period under review, an increase of 5.2% in “insomnia” expression and 8.4% in the “psychiatrist” phrase were predicted. The expression “psychologist” is expected to show an almost unchanged interest. The upcoming changes in the expressions connected with mental health might be explained by vaccination and the gradual removal of social distancing rules. Finally, the analysis of GT can provide a timely insight into the mental health interest of a population and give a forecast for a short period trend.

Keywords: mental health; depression; insomnia; loneliness; psychologist; psychiatrist; COVID-19; Google Trends (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/23/12369/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/23/12369/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:23:p:12369-:d:687116

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().