@Article{info:doi/10.2196/22181,
author="Lin, Yu-Hsuan
and Chiang, Ting-Wei
and Lin, Yu-Lun",
title="Increased Internet Searches for Insomnia as an Indicator of Global Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Multinational Longitudinal Study",
journal="J Med Internet Res",
year="2020",
month="Sep",
day="21",
volume="22",
number="9",
pages="e22181",
keywords="internet search; Google Trends; infodemiology; infoveillance; COVID-19; insomnia; mental health",
abstract="Background: Real-time global mental health surveillance is urgently needed for tracking the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Objective: This study aimed to use Google Trends data to investigate the impact of the pandemic on global mental health by analyzing three keywords indicative of mental distress: ``insomnia,'' ``depression,'' and ``suicide.'' Methods: We examined increases in search queries for 19 countries. Significant increases were defined as the actual daily search value (from March 20 to April 19, 2020) being higher than the 95{\%} CIs of the forecast from the 3-month baseline via ARIMA (autoregressive integrated moving average) modeling. We examined the correlation between increases in COVID-19--related deaths and the number of days with significant increases in search volumes for insomnia, depression, and suicide across multiple nations. Results: The countries with the greatest increases in searches for insomnia were Iran, Spain, the United States, and Italy; these countries exhibited a significant increase in insomnia searches on more than 10 of the 31 days observed. The number of COVID-19--related deaths was positively correlated to the number of days with an increase in searches for insomnia in the 19 countries ($\rho$=0.64, P=.003). By contrast, there was no significant correlation between the number of deaths and increases in searches for depression ($\rho$=--0.12, P=.63) or suicide ($\rho$=--0.07, P=.79). Conclusions: Our analysis suggests that insomnia could be a part of routine mental health screening during the COVID-19 pandemic. ",
issn="1438-8871",
doi="10.2196/22181",
url="http://www.jmir.org/2020/9/e22181/",
url="https://doi.org/10.2196/22181",
url="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32924951"
}