Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Bereaved: A Study of Bereaved Weibo Users

Nuo Han; Gewei Chen; Sijia Li; Feng Huang; Xiaoyang Wang; Xiaopeng Ren; Tingshao Zhu

doi:10.3390/healthcare9060724

Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Bereaved: A Study of Bereaved Weibo Users

Healthcare (Basel). 2021 Jun 12;9(6):724. doi: 10.3390/healthcare9060724.

Authors

Nuo Han^{1

2}, Gewei Chen³, Sijia Li^{1

2}, Feng Huang^{1

2}, Xiaoyang Wang^{1

2}, Xiaopeng Ren^{1

2}, Tingshao Zhu^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China.
² Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
³ Beijing Key Laboratory of Applied Experimental Psychology, National Demonstration Center for Experimental Psychology Education, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China.

Abstract

The global COVID-19 pandemic may significantly affect the experiences of death and bereavement. This study aimed to learn from recent outbreaks of infectious diseases and further understand their impacts on bereavement. We obtained psychological status scores for 32 individuals bereaved due to COVID-19 and 127 individuals bereaved due to non-COVID-19 causes using the online ecological recognition (OER) approach. Next, a sentiment analysis and independent sample t-test were performed to examine the differences between these two groups. The results indicated that the individuals bereaved due to COVID-19 were more insecure and more preoccupied with the grief of the moment than those bereaved due to non-COVID-19 reasons, while the latter group had higher depression scores than the former group. This study can guide policy-makers and clinical practitioners to provide more targeted and sustainable post-bereavement support for both bereaved groups during the COVID-19 period.

Keywords: COVID-19; OER; bereavement; mental health; public health; social media.

Abstract

Grants and funding