Impact of the pandemic and its containment measures in Europe upon aspects of affective impairments: a Google Trends informetrics study.

BACKGROUND: In late 2019, a new virus began spreading in Wuhan, China. By the end of 2021, more than 260 million people worldwide had been infected and 5.2 million people had died because of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Various countermeasures have been implemented to contain the infections, depending on the country, infection prevalence, and political and infrastructural resources. The pandemic and the containment measures have induced diverse psychological burdens. Using internet queries as a proxy, this study examines the psychological consequences on a European level of SARS-CoV-2 containment measures. METHODS: Using informetric analyses, this study reviews within 32 European countries a total of 28 search parameters derived from the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10) as aspects of affective disorder. RESULTS: Our results show that there are several psychological aspects which are significantly emphasized during the pandemic and its containment measures: 'anxiety', 'dejection', 'weariness', 'listlessness', 'loss of appetite', 'loss of libido', 'panic attack', and 'worthlessness'. These terms are significantly more frequently part of a search query during the pandemic than before the outbreak. Furthermore, our results revealed that search parameters such as 'psychologist', 'psychotherapist', 'psychotherapy' have increased highly significantly (p < 0.01) since the pandemic. CONCLUSIONS: The psychological distress caused by the pandemic correlates significantly with the frequency of people searching for psychological and psychotherapeutic support on the Internet.

Google Trends for Pain Search Terms in the World's Most Populated Regions Before and After the First Recorded COVID-19 Case: Infodemiological Study.

BACKGROUND: Web-based analysis of search queries has become a very useful method in various academic fields for understanding timely and regional differences in the public interest in certain terms and concepts. Particularly in health and medical research, Google Trends has been increasingly used over the last decade. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to assess the search activity of pain-related parameters on Google Trends from among the most populated regions worldwide over a 3-year period from before the report of the first confirmed COVID-19 cases in these regions (January 2018) until December 2020. METHODS: Search terms from the following regions were used for the analysis: India, China, Europe, the United States, Brazil, Pakistan, and Indonesia. In total, 24 expressions of pain location were assessed. Search terms were extracted using the local language of the respective country. Python scripts were used for data mining. All statistical calculations were performed through exploratory data analysis and nonparametric Mann-Whitney U tests. RESULTS: Although the overall search activity for pain-related terms increased, apart from pain entities such as headache, chest pain, and sore throat, we observed discordant search activity. Among the most populous regions, pain-related search parameters for shoulder, abdominal, and chest pain, headache, and toothache differed significantly before and after the first officially confirmed COVID-19 cases (for all, P<.001). In addition, we observed a heterogenous, marked increase or reduction in pain-related search parameters among the most populated regions. CONCLUSIONS: As internet searches are a surrogate for public interest, we assume that our data are indicative of an increased incidence of pain after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, as these increased incidences vary across geographical and anatomical locations, our findings could potentially facilitate the development of specific strategies to support the most affected groups.

Spirituality in pain medicine: A randomized experiment of pain perception, heart rate and religious spiritual well-being by using a single session meditation methodology.

The aim of this study is to investigate different effects on pain perception among randomly assigned volunteers practicing meditation compared to a relaxation condition. The study examines whether participants of the experimental conditions (meditation versus relaxation) differ in the change of pain perception and heart rate measurement and in religious and spiritual well-being after an intervention. METHOD: 147 volunteers (long-term practitioners and novices) were randomly assigned to the experimental conditions with a headphone guided 20-minute single session intervention. The change in their pre- and post-intervention pain perception was measured using Quantitative Sensory Testing and Cold Pressor Testing (CPTest), their stress-level was compared by monitoring heart rate, and their religious and spiritual well-being by using the Multidimensional Inventory for Religious/Spiritual Well-Being (MI-RSB48). Additionally, dimensions of the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) measured the psychological resilience of the participants; pain and stress experience, and the state of relaxation and spirituality experience were assessed. Five persons were excluded due to failure in measuring the heart rate and 29 participants had to be excluded because of high values on the BSI. RESULTS: The meditation group showed an increase in their pain tolerance on the CPTest and a decrease in their pain intensity for heat after the experimental condition, in contrast to the relaxation group. Futhermore, the meditation group showed a higher level of religious spiritual well-being (MI-RSB48 Total score) as well as in the sub-dimensions General Religiosity, Forgiveness, and Connectedness after the experimental condition, compared to the relaxation group. Our data is consistent with the hypothesis that meditation increases pain tolerance and reduces pain intensity, however, further work is required to determine whether meditation contains similar implications for pain patients.

Depression-Burnout Overlap in Physicians.

BACKGROUND: Whether burnout is a distinct phenomenon rather than a type of depression and whether it is a syndrome, limited to three "core" components (emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and low personal accomplishment) are subjects of current debate. We investigated the depression-burnout overlap, and the pertinence of these three components in a large, representative sample of physicians. METHODS: In a cross-sectional study, all Austrian physicians were invited to answer a questionnaire that included the Major Depression Inventory (MDI), the Hamburg Burnout Inventory (HBI), as well as demographic and job-related parameters. Of the 40093 physicians who received an invitation, a total of 6351 (15.8%) participated. The data of 5897 participants were suitable for analysis. RESULTS: Of the participants, 10.3% were affected by major depression. Our study results suggest that potentially 50.7% of the participants were affected by symptoms of burnout. Compared to physicians unaffected by burnout, the odds ratio of suffering from major depression was 2.99 (95% CI 2.21-4.06) for physicians with mild, 10.14 (95% CI 7.58-13.59) for physicians with moderate, 46.84 (95% CI 35.25-62.24) for physicians with severe burnout and 92.78 (95% CI 62.96-136.74) for the 3% of participants with the highest HBI_sum (sum score of all ten HBI components). The HBI components Emotional Exhaustion, Personal Accomplishment and Detachment (representing depersonalization) tend to correlate more highly with the main symptoms of major depression (sadness, lack of interest and lack of energy) than with each other. A combination of the HBI components Emotional Exhaustion, Helplessness, Inner Void and Tedium (adj.R2 = 0.92) explained more HBI_sum variance than the three "core" components (adj.R2 = 0.85) of burnout combined. Cronbach's alpha for Emotional Exhaustion, Helplessness, Inner Void and Tedium combined was 0.90 compared to α = 0.54 for the combination of the three "core" components. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates the overlap of burnout and major depression in terms of symptoms and the deficiency of the three-dimensional concept of burnout. In our opinion, it might be preferable to use multidimensional burnout inventories in combination with valid depression scales than to rely exclusively on MBI when clinically assessing burnout.