Emotional health status and social mentality of the Chinese general public during the 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia pandemic (Special Section: COVID-19) [Chinese]

ABSTRACT

In order to evaluate the emotional state and the social mentality of the Chinese public during the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) pneumonia pandemic, the data of two online public surveys conducted on February 18-20 and 21-22 are analyzed. The results show that nearly 1/3 of the respondents have some degree of depression symptoms, and 22.4% have significant anxiety symptoms. The current level of depression is higher than in the 2008 national survey. Among various occupational groups, the anxiety and the depression are significantly higher among the unemployed, and the mental health state of private enterprises, self-employed and entrepreneurs is in a relatively low level. In terms of social mentality, the public are in different psychological stages, some of them are prone to be depressive and angry. The public tend to be more altruistic under pressure, especially toward medical workers. According to the survey results, the current mental health is a very important issue to work upon, in the current epidemic it is necessary to persistently strengthen the public mental health publicity and the psychological counseling, to deal with the mental health problems after the epidemic, to strengthen the construction of the social psychological service system, and to improve the public mental health literacy in the future.