Information seeking, mental health and loneliness: Longitudinal analyses of adults in the UK COVID-19 Mental Health & Wellbeing study

Abstract

Information-seeking has generally been seen as an adaptive response to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it may also result in negative outcomes on mental health. The present study tests whether reporting COVID-related information-seeking throughout the pandemic is associated with subsequently poorer mental health outcomes. A quota-based, non-probability-sampling methodology was used to recruit a nationally representative sample. COVID-related information-seeking was assessed at six waves along with symptoms of depression, anxiety, mental wellbeing and loneliness (N = 1945). Hierarchical linear modelling was used to assess the relationship between COVID-related information-seeking and mental health outcomes. Information-seeking was found to reduce over time. Overall, women, older and higher socioeconomic group individuals reported higher levels of information-seeking. At waves 1-4 (March-June 2020) the majority of participants reported that they sought information on Covid 1-5 times per day, this decreased to less than once per day in waves 5 and 6 (July-November 2020). Higher levels of information-seeking were associated with poorer mental health outcomes, particularly clinically significant levels of anxiety. Use of a non-probability sampling method may have been a study limitation, nevertheless, reducing or managing information-seeking behaviour may be one method to reduce anxiety during pandemics and other public health crises.

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This article is available under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) and permits non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. For commercial reuse, permission must be requested.

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Identifiers

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2022.114876

Repository URI

http://hdl.handle.net/1893/34574