Assessment of the Mental Health Status of Social Media Users during the Outbreak of COVID-19

The sudden outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a shock to the international community, especially global health policymakers, has affected millions of individuals. The current study aimed to investigate the mental health status of social media users during the outbreak of COVID-19 in Iran.

The present descriptive study was carried out on a total of 443 Telegram and WhatsApp users selected using convenience sampling. Data collection was conducted by the online questionnaire of the symptoms of mental disorders of Hopkins Symptoms Checklist (HSCL)-25. The statistical methods of mean and standard deviation and t-test were used in order to analyze the data.

The obtained findings showed that the mean total score of the symptoms of mental disorders was relatively high among the participants. Based on the results, it was shown that the mean score of mental symptoms among the study subjects at low levels was 9.27%. In this study, phobia among the respondents was reported with an average of 27.3%. The lowest rate among mental disorders was related to psychosis with an average of 0.5% (P˂0.05).

Based on the findings of the current study, the mean scores of women in mental disorders, physical complaints, obsessive-compulsive disorder, interpersonal sensitivity, and paranoid thoughts were higher than those reported for men. The infected individuals with COVID-19 had higher symptoms of mental disorders in the components of physical complaints, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, and phobia than those not infected with COVID-19. The single participants had higher symptoms of mental disorders than the married subjects. The symptoms of physical complaints, anxiety, and phobia were higher among the patients with chronic illnesses than those without chronic diseases. The frequency of phobia was higher among the participants with parents suffering from chronic diseases.