Dataset Information

The Mental Health Impact of Daily News Exposure During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Ecological Momentary Assessment Study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Consumption of distressing news media, which substantially increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, has demonstrable negative effects on mental health.

Objective

This study examines the proximal impact of daily exposure to news about COVID-19 on mental health in the first year of the pandemic.

Methods

A sample of 546 college students completed daily ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) for 8 weeks, measuring exposure to news about COVID-19, worry and optimism specifically related to COVID-19, hopelessness, and general worry.

Results

Participants completed >80,000 surveys. Multilevel mediation models indicated that greater daily exposure to news about COVID-19 is associated with higher same-day and next-day worry about the pandemic. Elevations in worry specifically about COVID-19 were in turn associated with greater next-day hopelessness and general worry. Optimism about COVID-19 mediated the relationship between daily exposure to COVID-19 news and next-day general worry but was not related to hopelessness.

Conclusions

This study demonstrates the mental health impact of daily exposure to COVID-19 news and highlights how worry about the pandemic contributes over time to hopelessness and general worry.

SUBMITTER: Kellerman JK

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9135112 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

The Mental Health Impact of Daily News Exposure During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Ecological Momentary Assessment Study.

Kellerman John K JK Hamilton Jessica L JL Selby Edward A EA Kleiman Evan M EM

JMIR mental health 20220525 5

<h4>Background</h4>Consumption of distressing news media, which substantially increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, has demonstrable negative effects on mental health.<h4>Objective</h4>This study examines the proximal impact of daily exposure to news about COVID-19 on mental health in the first year of the pandemic.<h4>Methods</h4>A sample of 546 college students completed daily ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) for 8 weeks, measuring exposure to news about COVID-19, worry and optimism s ...[more]

PMID: 35377320

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Project description:Background Tinnitus is a heterogeneous condition which may be associated with moderate to severe disability, but the reasons why only a subset of individuals is burdened by the condition are not fully clear. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) allows a better understanding of tinnitus by capturing the fluctuations of tinnitus symptoms, such as distress and loudness, and psychological processes, such as emotional arousal, overall stress, mood, and concentration and how these variables interact over time. Whether any of those variables have an influence over the next day, that is, whether any of these variables are auto- or cross-correlated, is still unanswered. Objectives Assess whether behavioral and symptom-related data from tinnitus users from the TrackYourTinnitus (TYT) mobile app have an impact on tinnitus loudness and distress on subsequent days. Methods Anonymized data was collected from 278 users of the iOS or Android TYT apps between 2014 and 2020. Tinnitus-related distress, tinnitus loudness, concentration level, mood, emotional arousal, and overall stress level were assessed using either a slider or the Wong-Baker Pain FACES scale via a daily survey. Three modeling strategies were used to investigate whether tinnitus loudness and distress are affected by previous days symptoms or psychological processes: auto- and cross correlations, regressions with elastic net regularization, and subgrouping within group iterative multiple model estimation (S-GIMME). Results No autocorrelation or cross-correlation was observed at the group level between the variables assessed. However, application of the regression models with elastic net regularization identified individualized predictors of tinnitus loudness and distress for most participants, with the models including contemporaneous and lagged information from the previous day. S-GIMME corroborated these findings by identifying individualized predictors of tinnitus loudness and distress from the previous day. Discussion We showed that tinnitus loudness and tinnitus distress are affected by the contemporaneous and lagged dynamics of behavioral and emotional processes measured through EMA. These effects were seen at the group, and individual levels. The relevance EMA and the implications of the insights derived from it for tinnitus care are discussed, especially considering current trends toward the individualization of tinnitus care.

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Dataset Information

The Mental Health Impact of Daily News Exposure During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Ecological Momentary Assessment Study.

Background

Objective

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Publications

The Mental Health Impact of Daily News Exposure During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Ecological Momentary Assessment Study.

Similar Datasets

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