IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0260931.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Associations between COVID-19 mobility restrictions and economic, mental health, and suicide-related concerns in the US using cellular phone GPS and Google search volume data

Author

Listed:
  • Catherine Gimbrone
  • Caroline Rutherford
  • Sasikiran Kandula
  • Gonzalo Martínez-Alés
  • Jeffrey Shaman
  • Mark Olfson
  • Madelyn S Gould
  • Sen Pei
  • Marta Galanti
  • Katherine M Keyes

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, US populations have experienced elevated rates of financial and psychological distress that could lead to increases in suicide rates. Rapid ongoing mental health monitoring is critical for early intervention, especially in regions most affected by the pandemic, yet traditional surveillance data are available only after long lags. Novel information on real-time population isolation and concerns stemming from the pandemic’s social and economic impacts, via cellular mobility tracking and online search data, are potentially important interim surveillance resources. Using these measures, we employed transfer function model time-series analyses to estimate associations between daily mobility indicators (proportion of cellular devices completely at home and time spent at home) and Google Health Trends search volumes for terms pertaining to economic stress, mental health, and suicide during 2020 and 2021 both nationally and in New York City. During the first pandemic wave in early-spring 2020, over 50% of devices remained completely at home and searches for economic stressors exceeded 60,000 per 10 million. We found large concurrent associations across analyses between declining mobility and increasing searches for economic stressor terms (national proportion of devices at home: cross-correlation coefficient (CC) = 0.6 (p-value

Suggested Citation

  • Catherine Gimbrone & Caroline Rutherford & Sasikiran Kandula & Gonzalo Martínez-Alés & Jeffrey Shaman & Mark Olfson & Madelyn S Gould & Sen Pei & Marta Galanti & Katherine M Keyes, 2021. "Associations between COVID-19 mobility restrictions and economic, mental health, and suicide-related concerns in the US using cellular phone GPS and Google search volume data," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(12), pages 1-18, December.
  • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0260931
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0260931
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0260931
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0260931&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0260931?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Minha Lee & Jun Zhao & Qianqian Sun & Yixuan Pan & Weiyi Zhou & Chenfeng Xiong & Lei Zhang, 2020. "Human mobility trends during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(11), pages 1-15, November.
    2. Takanao Tanaka & Shohei Okamoto, 2021. "Increase in suicide following an initial decline during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 5(2), pages 229-238, February.
    3. Emily A Halford & Alison M Lake & Madelyn S Gould, 2020. "Google searches for suicide and suicide risk factors in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(7), pages 1-8, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Anderes, Marc & Pichler, Stefan, 2023. "Mental health effects of social distancing in Switzerland," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    2. Svaleryd, Helena & Vlachos, Jonas, 2022. "COVID-19 and School Closures," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1008, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    3. Sugiyama, Yuri, 2022. "Can Soft Law Improve the Welfare of Sexual Minorities? The Case of Same-sex Partnership Policy in Japan," CEI Working Paper Series 2022-06, Center for Economic Institutions, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    4. Kristina Gligorić & Arnaud Chiolero & Emre Kıcıman & Ryen W. White & Robert West, 2022. "Population-scale dietary interests during the COVID-19 pandemic," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-14, December.
    5. Hyun Joo Kwon & Mira Ahn & Jiyun Kang, 2021. "The Effects of Knowledge Types on Consumer Decision Making for Non-Toxic Housing Materials and Products," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(19), pages 1-14, October.
    6. Dorn, Florian & Lange, Berit & Braml, Martin & Gstrein, David & Nyirenda, John L.Z. & Vanella, Patrizio & Winter, Joachim & Fuest, Clemens & Krause, Gérard, 2023. "The challenge of estimating the direct and indirect effects of COVID-19 interventions – Toward an integrated economic and epidemiological approach," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    7. Erika Cantor & Rodrigo Salas & Romina Torres, 2022. "Femicide and Attempted Femicide before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Chile," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(13), pages 1-13, June.
    8. Isaac Ampofo Atta Senior & Isaac Ampofo Atta Junior & Enock Tweneboah Darkwa, 2021. "Effects Of Coronavirus On Our Social Life And Information Sharing," Social Values & Society (SVS), Zibeline International Publishing, vol. 3(2), pages 44-50, May.
    9. Haruhiko Midorikawa & Hirokazu Tachikawa & Miyuki Aiba & Yuki Shiratori & Daichi Sugawara & Naoaki Kawakami & Ryo Okubo & Takahiro Tabuchi, 2022. "Proposed Cut-Off Score for the Japanese Version of the Fear of Coronavirus Disease 2019 Scale (FCV-19S): Evidence from a Large-Scale National Survey in Japan," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(1), pages 1-13, December.
    10. Wang, Jueyu & Kaza, Nikhil & McDonald, Noreen C. & Khanal, Kshitiz, 2022. "Socio-economic disparities in activity-travel behavior adaptation during the COVID-19 pandemic in North Carolina," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 70-78.
    11. Singh, Suraj Shirodkar & Javanmard, Reyhane & Lee, Jinhyung & Kim, Junghwan & Diab, Ehab, 2021. "The new BRT system has led to an overall increase in transit-based accessibility to essential services during the COVID-19 pandemic: Empirical evidence from Winnipeg, Canada," OSF Preprints anjd7, Center for Open Science.
    12. Jinho Kim & Sujeong Park & S. V. Subramanian & Taehoon Kim, 2023. "The Psychological Costs of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Heterogeneous Effects in South Korea: Evidence from a Difference-in-Differences Analysis," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 24(2), pages 455-476, February.
    13. Yin, Xuecheng & Büyüktahtakın, İ. Esra & Patel, Bhumi P., 2023. "COVID-19: Data-Driven optimal allocation of ventilator supply under uncertainty and risk," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(1), pages 255-275.
    14. Damian J. Rivers & Giancarla Unser-Schutz & Nathanael Rudolph, 2023. "Vaccine Hesitancy and Susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 Misinformation in Japanese Youth: The Contribution of Personality Traits and National Identity," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 21(1), pages 1-20, December.
    15. Aditya Kulkarni & Minkyong Kim & Jayanta Bhattacharya & Joydeep Bhattacharya, 2023. "Businesses in high-income zip codes often saw sharper visit reductions during the COVID-19 pandemic," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(1), pages 1-10, December.
    16. John F. Helliwell & Max B. Norton & Shun Wang & Lara B. Aknin & Haifang Huang, 2021. "Well-being Analysis Favours a Virus-Elimination Strategy for COVID-19," NBER Working Papers 29092, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Rebeca Gracia-Liso & Maria J. Portella & Joaquim Puntí-Vidal & Elena Pujals-Altés & Jordi Torralbas-Ortega & Marta Llorens & Montserrat Pamias & Marc Fradera-Jiménez & Itziar Montalvo-Aguirrezabala & , 2023. "COVID-19 Pandemic Has Changed the Psychiatric Profile of Adolescents Attempting Suicide: A Cross-Sectional Comparison," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(4), pages 1-11, February.
    18. Michihito Ando & Masato Furuichi, 2022. "The association of COVID-19 employment shocks with suicide and safety net use: An early-stage investigation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(3), pages 1-26, March.
    19. Yichen Shen & Rong Fu & Haruko Noguchi, 2021. "COVID‐19's Lockdown and Crime Victimization: The State of Emergency under the Abe Administration," Asian Economic Policy Review, Japan Center for Economic Research, vol. 16(2), pages 327-348, July.
    20. Tomoyuki Kobayashi & Masaharu Maeda & Yui Takebayashi & Hideki Sato, 2021. "Traditional Gender Differences Create Gaps in the Effect of COVID-19 on Psychological Distress of Japanese Workers," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(16), pages 1-19, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0260931. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.