A Study on People's Mental Health on Twitter during the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most highly discussed topics throughout its entire lifespan. This pandemic has caused huge losses throughout the world, ranging from economic losses to a massive death toll of over five million that is still growing. One aspect has not been touched on nearly as much as the impact on mental health worldwide. We decided to study the pandemic's impact on peoples' mental health, specifically depression and the many symptoms that come with it. Twitter was used for this study as it has many raw and unfiltered personal sentiments from its many users. Twitter also has a helpful developer API that allows tweets to be queried at a massive scale. Throughout our research, we found that the number of people discussing COVID-19 depression was much higher during the first six months of the pandemic. However, during the following six months, those still suffering from such depression were experiencing worse symptoms with greater frequency. © 2022 ACM.