We found that 27% of all of our respondents experienced generalized COVID-19 related anxiety and a in those individuals who experienced the virus firsthand, even higher anxiety. This knowledge can allow educational resources to be geared around student anxiety resources. Mental health continues to be a major public health concern as it relates to COVID-19 LINK. #covid19research #anxiety #socialchangemakers
At the very beginning of this Mental Health America online screening program they main finding in the executive summary is:
The number of people looking for help with anxiety and depression has skyrocketed.
From January to September 2020, 315,220 people took the anxiety screen, a 93 percent increase over the 2019 total number of anxiety screens. This trend is confirmed by our data presented below. Approximately, 534,784 people took the depression screen, a 62 percent increase over the 2019 total number of depression screens.
Theoretical and Empirical Connections Between Physical and Mental Health among US adults in a Pandemic Era
LINK for Social Change Grant Presentation
Social Change Fellowship Presentation on January 14, 2022.
Co-PIs: Sri Banerjee & Gary Szirony
Graduate Assistants: John Huth & Maryangelli Sierra
Above is Google Search Trends for anxiety (in red) versus depression (in blue) for understanding the timeframe between January 1, 2020 and January 16, 2022. Notice how anxiety stayed at a rate which depression went down between the beginning and now. There were varying patterns that existed within the states.
From the process of ideation to creating a research agenda, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes preliminary work that takes place. For instance, one common practice that you should get in the habit of doing a deeper dive on certain key terms and topics. The process of narrowing research terminology eventually comes from exploring several databases and effectively conducting a thematic analysis. However, it can be a highly effective practice to search the term on Google Trends, using https://trends.google.com.
For some preliminary explanation of the process please view the video located below:
This was a post that I had on LinkedIn tracking some of the progress of the research. We were able to present some of the robust qualitative findings and thematic analysis at an international NVIVO conference. There were additional updates we had. You can also access some of these videos in the YouTube library. We had a lot of wonderful responses in the qualitative analysis portion of the research. What is interesting is that because this section is open-ended and also the response to the actual advertisement also something that is not included. However, I will include this one song which resonates about some of the emotions people felt during the pandemic. You can access this here.
Below we conducted a preliminary search trend on depression. This was then presented as it relates to the pandemic. This was proof to us that this needed to be further researched within society. We decided to further primary underdiagnosed mental health condition known as anxiety.
Here is the link that you can use to try out a search term of your own and understand search behavior. Understanding the word and word root was a technique that I was trained in since medical school since I was told that most unknown medical words can easily be cracked by understanding the meaning of the word roots that comprise whole words.
We decided to broaden our understanding of the pandemic and the social conditions that made dealing with this pandemic all the more challenging. The wellness wheel can help inform this further to enhance the social determinants of health so that the social issues can be understood from a multifaceted approach.
Social Change Grant Details
Specific Aims
The main purpose of this two-phase, explanatory mixed methods study will be to understand the role of mental health conditions like depression in mortality related to physical health during the pandemic era. 1. Identify mental health issues that are important during the COVID-19 pandemic 2. Understand precisely which factors (i.e. food insecurity, geographic region, crime rate, and ethnicity) modify the connection between physical and mental health 3. Apply the biopsychosocial model as a theoretical foundation to further enhance understanding of potential interactions between the individual and the system. 4. Create a theoretical construct as an enhancement to the biopsychosocial and life course model to inform future research on pandemics.
Problem Statement
Poor mental health leads to many unintended, long-term consequences like lack of proper physical health and declines in work productivity and cognition. However, the exact understanding of what factors are related to the characteristics of global leaders are not clear from the current literature. There is a gap in the literature as to which factors (food insecurity, geographic region, crime rate, and ethnicity) impact mortality as it relates to mental health. More specifically, research is needed to understand how the pandemic plays a role in creating mental health issues.
Some Important Findings from our Study presented at NFM:
The process of actual grant-writing and the research gathering, analysis, and dissemination is all part of the grand picture of social change
If effectively, both quantitative and qualitative methodologies should be explored to address community level needs especially during public health emergencies during the pandemic
Mapping can serve as another powerful tool to better understand and address the community-level gaps and social determinants that are the root, underlying cause of many of the effects that have been described.
More important findings:
The figures are presented in the order that the questionnaire was arranged. According to Figure 1, while the vast majority did not experience this, a total of 23.9% had experienced some form of dizziness from news. This alone is a variable that can be used to study the effect of negative news on individuals. In combination with other variables, this can provide additional insights as well. There is a discrepancy between the actual N and those that are included in the final analysis due to one analysis being run including duplicates and another excluding duplicates. This will have to be made consistent during the final report.
Sleep is a major indicator of other issues and connected to chronic disease. Knowing the connections between sleep and other variables will help us identify in what situations sleep hygiene needs to be assessed. According to Figure 2, nearly 50% experiences some sleep problems specifically due to COVID-19 related worries. According to the one abstract, there were some interesting findings relating sleep to other variables like suicidal ideation and had some interesting associations.
In Figure 3, paralysis and frozen symptoms were assessed. These symptoms can be also considered alone or in conjunction with other measures.
Figure 3: Paralysis symptom experienced.
The full Midterm Report Can be found HERE. Below I have included the whole survey in Google Forms. The topic areas that were covered were food insecurity, suicidal ideation, anxiety, and COVID-19 status. We also conducted both qualitative and quantitative analyses.
This invited presentation below was delivered at Millersville University during the pandemic to address student stress. It provides some insights about the stressors within the online classroom which were compounded by stressors from the pandemic. This was delivered March 5, 2021.