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      Suicidal ideation and thoughts of self‐harm during the COVID‐19 pandemic: The role of COVID‐19‐related stress, social isolation, and financial strain

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          Abstract

          Background

          There are significant concerns about mental health problems occurring due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic. To date, there has been limited empirical investigation about thoughts of suicide and self‐harm during the COVID‐19 pandemic.

          Methods

          A national survey was conducted May 2020 to investigate the association between mental health symptoms, social isolation, and financial stressors during the COVID‐19 pandemic and thoughts of suicide and self‐harm. A total of 6607 US adults completed an online survey; survey criteria included an age minimum of 22 years old and reported annual gross income of $75,000 or below. Statistical raking procedures were conducted to more precisely weight the sample using US Census data on age, geographic region, sex, race, and ethnicity.

          Results

          COVID‐19‐related stress symptoms, loneliness, and financial strain were associated with thoughts of suicide/self‐harm in multivariable logistic regression analyses, as were younger age, being a military veteran, past homelessness, lifetime severe mental illness, current depressive symptoms, alcohol misuse, and having tested positive for COVID‐19. Greater social support was inversely related to thoughts of suicide/self‐harm whereas running out of money for basic needs (e.g., food), housing instability (e.g., delaying rent), and filing for unemployment or disability were positively related.

          Conclusions

          Public health interventions to decrease risk of suicide and self‐harm in the wake of the COVID‐19 pandemic should address pandemic‐related stress, social isolation, and financial strain experienced including food insecurity, job loss, and risk of eviction/homelessness.

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          Most cited references40

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          The outbreak of COVID-19 coronavirus and its impact on global mental health

          The current outbreak of COVID-19 coronavirus infection among humans in Wuhan (China) and its spreading around the globe is heavily impacting on the global health and mental health. Despite all resources employed to counteract the spreading of the virus, additional global strategies are needed to handle the related mental health issues. Published articles concerning mental health related to the COVID-19 outbreak and other previous global infections have been considered and reviewed. This outbreak is leading to additional health problems such as stress, anxiety, depressive symptoms, insomnia, denial, anger and fear globally. Collective concerns influence daily behaviors, economy, prevention strategies and decision-making from policy makers, health organizations and medical centers, which can weaken strategies of COVID-19 control and lead to more morbidity and mental health needs at global level.
            Bookmark
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            The Patient Health Questionnaire-2: validity of a two-item depression screener.

            A number of self-administered questionnaires are available for assessing depression severity, including the 9-item Patient Health Questionnaire depression module (PHQ-9). Because even briefer measures might be desirable for use in busy clinical settings or as part of comprehensive health questionnaires, we evaluated a 2-item version of the PHQ depression module, the PHQ-2. The PHQ-2 inquires about the frequency of depressed mood and anhedonia over the past 2 weeks, scoring each as 0 ("not at all") to 3 ("nearly every day"). The PHQ-2 was completed by 6000 patients in 8 primary care clinics and 7 obstetrics-gynecology clinics. Construct validity was assessed using the 20-item Short-Form General Health Survey, self-reported sick days and clinic visits, and symptom-related difficulty. Criterion validity was assessed against an independent structured mental health professional (MHP) interview in a sample of 580 patients. As PHQ-2 depression severity increased from 0 to 6, there was a substantial decrease in functional status on all 6 SF-20 subscales. Also, symptom-related difficulty, sick days, and healthcare utilization increased. Using the MHP reinterview as the criterion standard, a PHQ-2 score > or =3 had a sensitivity of 83% and a specificity of 92% for major depression. Likelihood ratio and receiver operator characteristic analysis identified a PHQ-2 score of 3 as the optimal cutpoint for screening purposes. Results were similar in the primary care and obstetrics-gynecology samples. The construct and criterion validity of the PHQ-2 make it an attractive measure for depression screening.
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              Amazon's Mechanical Turk: A New Source of Inexpensive, Yet High-Quality, Data?

              Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) is a relatively new website that contains the major elements required to conduct research: an integrated participant compensation system; a large participant pool; and a streamlined process of study design, participant recruitment, and data collection. In this article, we describe and evaluate the potential contributions of MTurk to psychology and other social sciences. Findings indicate that (a) MTurk participants are slightly more demographically diverse than are standard Internet samples and are significantly more diverse than typical American college samples; (b) participation is affected by compensation rate and task length, but participants can still be recruited rapidly and inexpensively; (c) realistic compensation rates do not affect data quality; and (d) the data obtained are at least as reliable as those obtained via traditional methods. Overall, MTurk can be used to obtain high-quality data inexpensively and rapidly.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                eric.elbogen@duke.edu
                Journal
                Depress Anxiety
                Depress Anxiety
                10.1002/(ISSN)1520-6394
                DA
                Depression and Anxiety
                John Wiley and Sons Inc. (Hoboken )
                1091-4269
                1520-6394
                05 May 2021
                : 10.1002/da.23162
                Affiliations
                [ 1 ] Department of Veterans Affairs National Center on Homelessness Among Veterans Tampa Florida USA
                [ 2 ] VISN 6 Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC) Durham VA Health Care System Durham North Carolina USA
                [ 3 ] Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Duke University School of Medicine Durham North Carolina USA
                [ 4 ] Mental and Behavioral Health Services Durham VA Health Care System Durham North Carolina USA
                [ 5 ] School of Public Health University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston San Antonio Texas USA
                Author notes
                [*] [* ] Correspondence Eric B. Elbogen, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC 27705, USA.

                Email: eric.elbogen@ 123456duke.edu

                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8341-8028
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9291-3688
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0329-648X
                Article
                DA23162
                10.1002/da.23162
                8239640
                33949747
                a096b02f-d3c1-4b03-9fb4-c9fe91e14530
                © 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC. This article has been contributed to by US Government employees and their work is in the public domain in the USA.

                This article is being made freely available through PubMed Central as part of the COVID-19 public health emergency response. It can be used for unrestricted research re-use and analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source, for the duration of the public health emergency.

                History
                : 17 February 2021
                : 21 September 2020
                : 11 April 2021
                Page count
                Figures: 2, Tables: 3, Pages: 10, Words: 6386
                Categories
                Research Article
                Research Articles
                Custom metadata
                2.0
                corrected-proof
                Converter:WILEY_ML3GV2_TO_JATSPMC version:6.0.2 mode:remove_FC converted:29.06.2021

                Clinical Psychology & Psychiatry
                covid‐19 pandemic,financial strain,social isolation,stress,suicidal ideation

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