Impact of public health emergency on public psychology: analysis of mental health assistance hotlines during COVID-19 in Zhejiang province

• Published in: Zhejiang da xue xue bao. Journal of Zhejiang University. Medical sciences. Yi xue ban Vol. 49; no. 4; pp. 409 - 418
• Main Authors: Wang, Weidan, Xu, Fangzhong, Xu, Songquan, Zhang, Jianmin, Zhang, Ning
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Chinese
• Published: China 25.08.2020
• Subjects: China - epidemiology; Coronavirus Infections - epidemiology; COVID-19; Hotlines - statistics & numerical data; Humans; Mental Health - statistics & numerical data; Pandemics - statistics & numerical data; Pneumonia, Viral - epidemiology; Public Health - statistics & numerical data; China; Coronavirus disease 2019; Psychology; Public health
• ISSN: 1008-9292
• DOI: 10.3785/j.issn.1008-9292.2020.08.05

To analyze the usage of mental health assistance hotline during COVID-19 in Zhejiang province from January 25th to February 29th 2020, and summarize the characteristics of the demand for mental health services and the dynamic changes of public mental health status during COVID-19 pandemic. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used. The calls related to pandemic were divided into four categories: medical, psychological, information and the others. The secondary categories of psychological calls were determined by text analysis. The number of calls were calculated weekly and the number of various types of calls over time were analyzed. We used stratified random sampling method to extract 600 cases of all kinds of calls related to pandemic and conducted a semantic analysis, through marking new, similar combination to form a feature set, then summed up the call content characteristics of each stage. Two hundred callers were followed up to understand how they felt about the call process in four aspects: