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©The Author(s) 2024. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
Explosion of research on psychopathology and social media use after COVID-19: A scientometric study
Meng-Di Zhang, Rong-Quan He, Jia-Yuan Luo, Wan-Ying Huang, Jing-Yu Wei, Jian Dai, Hong Huang, Zhen Yang, Jin-Liang Kong, Gang Chen
Meng-Di Zhang, Jia-Yuan Luo, Wan-Ying Huang, Jing-Yu Wei, Gang Chen, Department of Pathology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning 530021, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China
Rong-Quan He, Department of Medical Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning 530021, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China
Jian Dai, Department of Clinical Psychology, Jiangbin Hospital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Nanning 530021, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China
Hong Huang, Zhen Yang, Jin-Liang Kong, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning 530021, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China
Author contributions: He RQ, Dai J, Huang H, Yang Z, Kong JL, and Chen G designed the research; Zhang MD and Wei JY searched, downloaded, and organized the raw data, and extracted and calculated the data; He RQ and Chen G analyzed and summarized the results; Zhang MD, Luo JY, Huang WY, and Wei JY wrote the first draft of the manuscript; Zhang MD, He RQ, Dai J, Huang H, Yang Z, Kong JL, and Chen G revised the paper.
Supported by Guangxi Higher Education Undergraduate Teaching Reform Project, No. 2022JGA146; Guangxi Educational Science Planning Key Project, No. 2022ZJY2791; Guangxi Medical University Key Textbook Construction Project, No. Gxmuzdjc2223; and Guangxi Medical High-Level Key Talents Training “139” Program.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
PRISMA 2009 Checklist statement: The authors have read the PRISMA 2009 Checklist, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the PRISMA 2009 Checklist.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See:
https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Corresponding author: Gang Chen, MD, PhD, Doctor, Professor, Department of Pathology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, No. 22 Shuangyong Road, Nanning 530021, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China. chengang@gxmu.edu.cn
Received: December 14, 2023
Revised: March 2, 2024
Accepted: April 3, 2024
Published online: May 19, 2024
Processing time: 153 Days and 13.2 Hours
BACKGROUND
Despite advances in research on psychopathology and social media use, no comprehensive review has examined published papers on this type of research and considered how it was affected by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak.
AIM
To explore the status of research on psychopathology and social media use before and after the COVID-19 outbreak.
METHODS
We used Bibliometrix (an R software package) to conduct a scientometric analysis of 4588 relevant studies drawn from the Web of Science Core Collection, PubMed, and Scopus databases.
RESULTS
Such research output was scarce before COVID-19, but exploded after the pandemic with the publication of a number of high-impact articles. Key authors and institutions, located primarily in developed countries, maintained their core positions, largely uninfluenced by COVID-19; however, research production and collaboration in developing countries increased significantly after COVID-19. Through the analysis of keywords, we identified commonly used methods in this field, together with specific populations, psychopathological conditions, and clinical treatments. Researchers have devoted increasing attention to gender differences in psychopathological states and linked COVID-19 strongly to depression, with depression detection becoming a new trend. Developments in research on psychopathology and social media use are unbalanced and uncoordinated across countries/regions, and more in-depth clinical studies should be conducted in the future.
CONCLUSION
After COVID-19, there was an increased level of concern about mental health issues and a changing emphasis on social media use and the impact of public health emergencies.
Core Tip: Rapid changes in the social health environment and the media have seriously affected human mental health. It is therefore important to capture research topics and trends in psychopathology and social media before and after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic through bibliometrics. The study, which examined 4588 publications from the Web of Science, PubMed, and Scopus databases, identified an explosion in the number of findings after the COVID-19 outbreak, whereas such studies had been rare before the pandemic. As researchers increasingly focus on gender differences in psychopathological states and identify strong links between COVID-19 and depression, the detection of depression will become a new trend in the field of psychopathology and social media use.
