Bibliometric analysis of global scientific literature on effects of COVID-19 pandemic on mental health

The study provides a comprehensive analysis of trends of the global scientific research on the effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Mental health from the first published literature up to June 27, 2021. Relevant documents were searched using mesh terms based on the query of two searches, “COVID-19 & Mental Health” scenarios joined by the Boolean operator “AND” to retrieve relevant literature using the Web of Science (WOS) database. Bibliometric indicators were analyzed using HistCite, Bibliometrix, an R package, and VOSviewer.Var1.6.6. A total of 5449 publications with an h-index of 97 were retrieved from the database. Overall, articles retrieved were written by 24123 authors, published in 1224 journals, 132 countries represented, and 10.01 average citations per document. Kings College London led the list of contributing institutions with 76 articles. The United States Department of Human Health Services, the National Institutes of Health, the USA, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China was the top funding agencies that enhanced research on mental health and supported more than 180 articles. USA contributed the most significant proportion 1157 (21.23 %) of COVID-19 Pandemic on Mental health publication closely followed by China in the number of publications 741(13.60 %). The study provides insight into the global research perspective for the scientific progress on the COVID-19 Pandemic public health emergency and the mental health issues, thus significantly impacting and supporting intervention towards improving people’s mental health post−COVID-19 outbreak.