IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v18y2021i23p12369-d687116.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • 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
    Institute of Dentistry, I. M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University, 119435 Moscow, Russia)

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Magdalena Sycińska-Dziarnowska & Liliana Szyszka-Sommerfeld & Karolina Kłoda & Michele Simeone & Krzysztof Woźniak & Gianrico Spagnuolo, 2021. "Mental Health Interest and Its Prediction during the COVID-19 Pandemic Using Google Trends," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(23), pages 1-14, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:23:p:12369-:d:687116
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/23/12369/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/23/12369/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Magdalena Sycinska-Dziarnowska & Iwona Paradowska-Stankiewicz & Krzysztof Woźniak, 2021. "The Global Interest in Vaccines and Its Prediction and Perspectives in the Era of COVID-19. Real-Time Surveillance Using Google Trends," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(15), pages 1-11, July.
    2. Hyndman, Rob J. & Koehler, Anne B. & Snyder, Ralph D. & Grose, Simone, 2002. "A state space framework for automatic forecasting using exponential smoothing methods," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 439-454.
    3. Genevieve Belleville & Marie-Christine Ouellet & Charles M. Morin, 2019. "Post-Traumatic Stress among Evacuees from the 2016 Fort McMurray Wildfires: Exploration of Psychological and Sleep Symptoms Three Months after the Evacuation," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(9), pages 1-14, May.
    4. Hyndman, Rob J. & Khandakar, Yeasmin, 2008. "Automatic Time Series Forecasting: The forecast Package for R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 27(i03).
    5. Assimakopoulos, V. & Nikolopoulos, K., 2000. "The theta model: a decomposition approach to forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 521-530.
    6. Makridakis, Spyros & Hibon, Michele, 2000. "The M3-Competition: results, conclusions and implications," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 451-476.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nicholas Tze Ping Pang & Assis Kamu & Chong Mun Ho & Walton Wider & Mathias Wen Leh Tseu, 2022. "An Analysis by State on The Effect of Movement Control Order (MCO) 3.0 Due to COVID-19 on Malaysians’ Mental Health: Evidence from Google Trends," Data, MDPI, vol. 7(11), pages 1-9, November.
    2. Yu Wang & Heming Deng & Sunan Gao & Tongxu Li & Feifei Wang, 2024. "A Fresh Perspective on Examining Population Emotional Well-Being Trends by Internet Search Engine: An Emerging Composite Anxiety and Depression Index," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 21(2), pages 1-12, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Petropoulos, Fotios & Trapero, Juan R., 2014. "Improving forecasting by estimating time series structural components across multiple frequencies," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 291-302.
    2. Hyndman, Rob J. & Khandakar, Yeasmin, 2008. "Automatic Time Series Forecasting: The forecast Package for R," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 27(i03).
    3. Meira, Erick & Cyrino Oliveira, Fernando Luiz & de Menezes, Lilian M., 2022. "Forecasting natural gas consumption using Bagging and modified regularization techniques," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    4. Kang, Yanfei & Hyndman, Rob J. & Smith-Miles, Kate, 2017. "Visualising forecasting algorithm performance using time series instance spaces," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 345-358.
    5. Fildes, Robert & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2015. "Simple versus complex selection rules for forecasting many time series," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(8), pages 1692-1701.
    6. Athanasopoulos, George & Hyndman, Rob J. & Song, Haiyan & Wu, Doris C., 2011. "The tourism forecasting competition," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 822-844.
    7. Kourentzes, Nikolaos & Saayman, Andrea & Jean-Pierre, Philippe & Provenzano, Davide & Sahli, Mondher & Seetaram, Neelu & Volo, Serena, 2021. "Visitor arrivals forecasts amid COVID-19: A perspective from the Africa team," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    8. Fildes, Robert & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2013. "An evaluation of simple forecasting model selection rules," MPRA Paper 51772, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Makridakis, Spyros & Hyndman, Rob J. & Petropoulos, Fotios, 2020. "Forecasting in social settings: The state of the art," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 15-28.
    10. Sbrana, Giacomo & Silvestrini, Andrea, 2023. "The RWDAR model: A novel state-space approach to forecasting," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 922-937.
    11. Makridakis, Spyros & Spiliotis, Evangelos & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios, 2020. "The M4 Competition: 100,000 time series and 61 forecasting methods," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 54-74.
    12. Semenoglou, Artemios-Anargyros & Spiliotis, Evangelos & Makridakis, Spyros & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios, 2021. "Investigating the accuracy of cross-learning time series forecasting methods," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 1072-1084.
    13. Spiliotis, Evangelos & Nikolopoulos, Konstantinos & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios, 2019. "Tales from tails: On the empirical distributions of forecasting errors and their implication to risk," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 687-698.
    14. Kang, Yanfei & Spiliotis, Evangelos & Petropoulos, Fotios & Athiniotis, Nikolaos & Li, Feng & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios, 2021. "Déjà vu: A data-centric forecasting approach through time series cross-similarity," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 719-731.
    15. Theodosiou, Marina, 2011. "Forecasting monthly and quarterly time series using STL decomposition," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 27(4), pages 1178-1195, October.
    16. Petropoulos, Fotios & Svetunkov, Ivan, 2020. "A simple combination of univariate models," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 110-115.
    17. Fotios Petropoulos & Evangelos Spiliotis, 2021. "The Wisdom of the Data: Getting the Most Out of Univariate Time Series Forecasting," Forecasting, MDPI, vol. 3(3), pages 1-20, June.
    18. Spiliotis, Evangelos & Kouloumos, Andreas & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios & Makridakis, Spyros, 2020. "Are forecasting competitions data representative of the reality?," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 37-53.
    19. Spiliotis, Evangelos & Assimakopoulos, Vassilios & Makridakis, Spyros, 2020. "Generalizing the Theta method for automatic forecasting," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 284(2), pages 550-558.
    20. Van Belle, Jente & Crevits, Ruben & Verbeke, Wouter, 2023. "Improving forecast stability using deep learning," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 1333-1350.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:23:p:12369-:d:687116. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.