JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The COVID-19 pandemic has overwhelmed health care systems around the world. Emerging evidence has suggested that significantly fewer patients seek help for suicidality at clinical settings amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, which elicit concerns of an imminent mental health crisis as the course of the pandemic continues to unfold. Clarifying the relationship between public’s attention to the knowledge about suicide and public’s attention to the knowledge about the COVID-19 pandemic may shed some insight into prevention strategies for a putative surge of suicidal wave in relation to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic.

Objective:

The goal of this retrospective longitudinal time-series study is to understand the relationship between temporal trends of search interests in suicide and COVID-19-related terms, such as social distancing, school closure, and lockdown, etc.

Methods:

We used Google Trends platform to collect daily interest levels for the search terms that included suicide and several other mental health-related issues, as well as COVID-19-related search terms, over the period between 14 February 2020 and 13 May 2020. Correlational analysis was performed to determine the association between the search term ‘‘suicide’’ and COVID-19 related search terms in 16 countries. The Mann-Kendall test was used to examine the significance of the search interest levels of suicide before and after school closure.

Results:

We found that levels of search interest in ”suicide” was statistically significantly inversely correlated with levels of search interest in the term ”COVID-19” or ”corona virus” in nearly all the countries between 14 February 2020 and 13 May 2020. Additionally, search interest in ‘‘suicide’’ also showed significant negative correlations with many COVID-19 related search terms, albeit which varied among countries. The Mann-Kendall test was used to examine the significance of the search interest levels of suicide before and after school closure. The Netherlands, New Zealand, UK and USA showed significant negative trends in the interest levels of suicide in the two-week period preceding the school closure. In contrast, the interest levels of suicide showed a significant positive trend in Canada and USA after school closures.

Conclusions:

The public’s attention to suicide might inversely correlate with the public’s attention to COVID-19-related issues. Additionally, some anti-contagion policies, such as school closure, might have led to a “turning point” for mental health crisis because the attention to suicidality increased after the restrictions were in place. The results suggest that an increased risk of suicidal ideation may ensue due to the ongoing anti-contagion policies. Timely intervention strategies for suicides, therefore, should be an integral part in the efforts to flatten the epidemic curve. Clinical Trial: Not applicable