Mental Health and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Analysis of Twitter Discourse

This study analyzed Twitter discourse to understand the association of the COVID-19 pandemic with mental health. The study compared tweets’ volume over time, tweets’ volume per mental health category, emotions, and the top hashtags on mental health before and after November 2019, the month on which the first COVID-19 case was reported. We analyzed a total of 273 million English tweets on mental health collected from 56 million unique users. Results and analysis showed a significant shift in trend for the volume of tweets on mental health over time. There was also a notable increase in the volume of tweets on depression, anxiety, stress, and suicide mental health groups. The volume of tweets posted by males and females was comparable. Finally, there was a noticeable increase in the average daily tweets that mention suicide prevention and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic