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Public Emotional and Coping Responses to the COVID-19 Infodemic: A Review and Recommendations

Since its onset in early 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has adversely affected not only the physical but also the mental health of people worldwide. Healthcare professionals and laypersons have sought to learn more about this novel and highly transmissible disease to better u...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Ying, Weijun, Cheng, Cecilia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8712438/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34970164
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.755938
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author Ying, Weijun
Cheng, Cecilia
author_facet Ying, Weijun
Cheng, Cecilia
author_sort Ying, Weijun
collection PubMed
description Since its onset in early 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has adversely affected not only the physical but also the mental health of people worldwide. Healthcare professionals and laypersons have sought to learn more about this novel and highly transmissible disease to better understand its etiology, treatment, and prevention. However, information overload and misinformation related to COVID-19 have elicited considerable public anxiety and created additional health threats. Collectively, these problems have been recognized by the World Health Organization as an “infodemic.” This review provides an overview of the global challenges posed by the COVID-19 infodemic, and used the psychological entropy model as a guiding framework to explicate the potential causes of the infodemic and identify potential solutions to mitigate impacts on public health. We first examine the role of anxiety in information processing and then delineate the adverse impacts of the infodemic. Finally, we propose strategies to combat the infodemic at the public, community, and individual levels.
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spelling pubmed-87124382021-12-29 Public Emotional and Coping Responses to the COVID-19 Infodemic: A Review and Recommendations Ying, Weijun Cheng, Cecilia Front Psychiatry Psychiatry Since its onset in early 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has adversely affected not only the physical but also the mental health of people worldwide. Healthcare professionals and laypersons have sought to learn more about this novel and highly transmissible disease to better understand its etiology, treatment, and prevention. However, information overload and misinformation related to COVID-19 have elicited considerable public anxiety and created additional health threats. Collectively, these problems have been recognized by the World Health Organization as an “infodemic.” This review provides an overview of the global challenges posed by the COVID-19 infodemic, and used the psychological entropy model as a guiding framework to explicate the potential causes of the infodemic and identify potential solutions to mitigate impacts on public health. We first examine the role of anxiety in information processing and then delineate the adverse impacts of the infodemic. Finally, we propose strategies to combat the infodemic at the public, community, and individual levels. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-12-14 /pmc/articles/PMC8712438/ /pubmed/34970164 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.755938 Text en Copyright © 2021 Ying and Cheng. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychiatry
Ying, Weijun
Cheng, Cecilia
Public Emotional and Coping Responses to the COVID-19 Infodemic: A Review and Recommendations
title Public Emotional and Coping Responses to the COVID-19 Infodemic: A Review and Recommendations
title_full Public Emotional and Coping Responses to the COVID-19 Infodemic: A Review and Recommendations
title_fullStr Public Emotional and Coping Responses to the COVID-19 Infodemic: A Review and Recommendations
title_full_unstemmed Public Emotional and Coping Responses to the COVID-19 Infodemic: A Review and Recommendations
title_short Public Emotional and Coping Responses to the COVID-19 Infodemic: A Review and Recommendations
title_sort public emotional and coping responses to the covid-19 infodemic: a review and recommendations
topic Psychiatry
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8712438/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34970164
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.755938
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