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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

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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
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    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.
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