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Online search trends and word-related emotional response during COVID-19 lockdown in Italy: a cross-sectional online study

BACKGROUND: The strong and long lockdown adopted by the Italian government to limit COVID-19 spreading represents the first threat-related mass isolation in history that can be studied in depth by scientists to understand individuals’ emotional response to a pandemic. METHODS: We investigated the ef...

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Autores principales: Montefinese, Maria, Ambrosini, Ettore, Angrilli, Alessandro
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8362677/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34434648
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11858
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author Montefinese, Maria
Ambrosini, Ettore
Angrilli, Alessandro
author_facet Montefinese, Maria
Ambrosini, Ettore
Angrilli, Alessandro
author_sort Montefinese, Maria
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The strong and long lockdown adopted by the Italian government to limit COVID-19 spreading represents the first threat-related mass isolation in history that can be studied in depth by scientists to understand individuals’ emotional response to a pandemic. METHODS: We investigated the effects on individuals’ mental wellbeing of this long-term isolation by means of an online survey on 71 Italian volunteers. They completed the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule and Fear of COVID-19 Scale and judged valence, arousal, and dominance of words either related or unrelated to COVID-19, as identified by Google search trends. RESULTS: Emotional judgments changes from normative data varied depending on word type and individuals’ emotional state, revealing early signals of individuals’ mental distress to COVID-19 confinement. All individuals judged COVID-19-related words to be less positive and dominant. However, individuals with more negative feelings and COVID-19 fear also judged COVID-19-unrelated words to be less positive and dominant. Moreover, arousal ratings increased for all words among individuals with more negative feelings and COVID-19 fear but decreased among individuals with less negative feelings and COVID-19 fear. DISCUSSION: Our results show a rich picture of emotional reactions of Italians to tight and 2-month long confinement, identifying early signals of mental health distress. They are an alert to the need for intervention strategies and psychological assessment of individuals potentially needing mental health support following the COVID-19 situation.
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spelling pubmed-83626772021-08-24 Online search trends and word-related emotional response during COVID-19 lockdown in Italy: a cross-sectional online study Montefinese, Maria Ambrosini, Ettore Angrilli, Alessandro PeerJ Health Policy BACKGROUND: The strong and long lockdown adopted by the Italian government to limit COVID-19 spreading represents the first threat-related mass isolation in history that can be studied in depth by scientists to understand individuals’ emotional response to a pandemic. METHODS: We investigated the effects on individuals’ mental wellbeing of this long-term isolation by means of an online survey on 71 Italian volunteers. They completed the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule and Fear of COVID-19 Scale and judged valence, arousal, and dominance of words either related or unrelated to COVID-19, as identified by Google search trends. RESULTS: Emotional judgments changes from normative data varied depending on word type and individuals’ emotional state, revealing early signals of individuals’ mental distress to COVID-19 confinement. All individuals judged COVID-19-related words to be less positive and dominant. However, individuals with more negative feelings and COVID-19 fear also judged COVID-19-unrelated words to be less positive and dominant. Moreover, arousal ratings increased for all words among individuals with more negative feelings and COVID-19 fear but decreased among individuals with less negative feelings and COVID-19 fear. DISCUSSION: Our results show a rich picture of emotional reactions of Italians to tight and 2-month long confinement, identifying early signals of mental health distress. They are an alert to the need for intervention strategies and psychological assessment of individuals potentially needing mental health support following the COVID-19 situation. PeerJ Inc. 2021-08-10 /pmc/articles/PMC8362677/ /pubmed/34434648 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11858 Text en ©2021 Montefinese et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Health Policy
Montefinese, Maria
Ambrosini, Ettore
Angrilli, Alessandro
Online search trends and word-related emotional response during COVID-19 lockdown in Italy: a cross-sectional online study
title Online search trends and word-related emotional response during COVID-19 lockdown in Italy: a cross-sectional online study
title_full Online search trends and word-related emotional response during COVID-19 lockdown in Italy: a cross-sectional online study
title_fullStr Online search trends and word-related emotional response during COVID-19 lockdown in Italy: a cross-sectional online study
title_full_unstemmed Online search trends and word-related emotional response during COVID-19 lockdown in Italy: a cross-sectional online study
title_short Online search trends and word-related emotional response during COVID-19 lockdown in Italy: a cross-sectional online study
title_sort online search trends and word-related emotional response during covid-19 lockdown in italy: a cross-sectional online study
topic Health Policy
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8362677/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34434648
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11858
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