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      Mental health toll from the coronavirus: Social media usage reveals Wuhan residents’ depression and secondary trauma in the COVID-19 outbreak

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          Abstract

          This study investigates the possible association between social media usage and the mental health toll from the coronavirus at the peak of Wuhan's COVID-19 outbreak. Informed by the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication Model and Health Belief Model, it proposes a conceptual model to study how people in Wuhan – the first epicenter of the global COVID-19 pandemic – used social media and its effects on users' mental health conditions and health behavior change. The results show that social media usage was related to both depression and secondary trauma, which also predicted health behavior change. But no relation was detected between health behavior change and mental health conditions. As the virus struck, social media usage was rewarding to Wuhan people who gained informational, emotional, and peer support from the health information shared on social media. An excessive use of social media, however, led to mental health issues. The results imply that taking a social media break may promote well-being during the pandemic, which is crucial to mitigating mental health harm inflicted by the pandemic.

          Highlights

          • This study reveals mental health toll at the peak of Wuhan's COVID-19 outbreak.

          • Social media usage predicted both depression and secondary trauma in Wuhan residents.

          • Social media usage predicted health behavior change during the public health crisis.

          • Social media usage offered users vital informational, emotional, and peer support.

          • Social media are not the culprit for mental health issues detected in the pandemic.

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          Most cited references30

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          The relationship between addictive use of social media, narcissism, and self-esteem: Findings from a large national survey.

          Social media has become an increasingly popular leisure activity over the last decade. Although most people's social media use is non-problematic, a small number of users appear to engage in social media excessively and/or compulsively. The main objective of this study was to examine the associations between addictive use of social media, narcissism, and self-esteem. A cross-sectional convenient sample of 23,532 Norwegians (Mage=35.8years; range=16-88years) completed an open web-based survey including the Bergen Social Media Addiction Scale (BSMAS), the Narcissistic Personality Inventory-16, and the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale. Results demonstrated that lower age, being a woman, not being in a relationship, being a student, lower education, lower income, lower self-esteem, and narcissism were associated with higher scores on the BSMAS, explaining a total of 17.5% of the variance. Although most effect sizes were relatively modest, the findings supported the notion of addictive social media use reflecting a need to feed the ego (i.e., narcissistic personality traits) and an attempt to inhibit a negative self-evaluation (i.e., self-esteem). The results were also consistent with demographic predictions and associations taken from central theories concerning "addiction", indicating that women may tend to develop more addictive use of activities involving social interaction than men. However, the cross-sectional study design makes inferences about directionality impossible.
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            The Health Belief Model as an Explanatory Framework in Communication Research: Exploring Parallel, Serial, and Moderated Mediation

            The Health Belief Model (HBM) posits that messages will achieve optimal behavior change if they successfully target perceived barriers, benefits, self-efficacy, and threat. While the model seems to be an ideal explanatory framework for communication research, theoretical limitations have limited its use in the field. Notably, variable ordering is currently undefined in the HBM. Thus, it is unclear whether constructs mediate relationships comparably (parallel mediation), in sequence (serial mediation), or in tandem with a moderator (moderated mediation). To investigate variable ordering, adults (N = 1,377) completed a survey in the aftermath of an 8-month flu vaccine campaign grounded in the HBM. Exposure to the campaign was positively related to vaccination behavior. Statistical evaluation supported a model where the indirect effect of exposure on behavior through perceived barriers and threat was moderated by self-efficacy (moderated mediation). Perceived barriers and benefits also formed a serial mediation chain. The results indicate that variable ordering in the Health Belief Model may be complex, may help to explain conflicting results of the past, and may be a good focus for future research.
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              Crisis and emergency risk communication as an integrative model.

              This article describes a model of communication known as crisis and emergency risk communication (CERC). The model is outlined as a merger of many traditional notions of health and risk communication with work in crisis and disaster communication. The specific kinds of communication activities that should be called for at various stages of disaster or crisis development are outlined. Although crises are by definition uncertain, equivocal, and often chaotic situations, the CERC model is presented as a tool health communicators can use to help manage these complex events.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Comput Human Behav
                Comput Human Behav
                Computers in Human Behavior
                Published by Elsevier Ltd.
                0747-5632
                0747-5632
                15 August 2020
                15 August 2020
                : 106524
                Affiliations
                [a ]Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA
                [b ]School of Journalism and Communication, Jinan University, 601 Huangpu Ave. West, Guangzhou, 510632, China
                [c ]School of Journalism and Communication, National Media Experimental Teaching Demonstration Center, Jinan University, 601 Huangpu Ave. West, Guangzhou, 510632, China
                Author notes
                []Corresponding author. tsusanliu@ 123456jnu.edu.cn
                [1]

                Bu Zhong and Yakun Huang share the co-first authorship.

                Article
                S0747-5632(20)30276-4 106524
                10.1016/j.chb.2020.106524
                7428783
                32836728
                6a806a1c-b8a6-455f-a6d7-439adddc6f19
                © 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

                Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

                History
                : 24 May 2020
                : 8 August 2020
                : 12 August 2020
                Categories
                Article

                covid-19,wuhan,social media,mental health,health behavior change,coronavirus

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