Pseudoscientific beliefs and psychopathological risks increase after COVID-19 social quarantine

Abstract

Background: The health crisis caused by COVID-19 has led many countries to opt for social quarantine of the population. During this quarantine, communication systems have been characterized by disintermediation, the acceleration of digitization and an infodemic (excess and saturation of information). The following debate arises: Do the levels related to the psychotic phenotype and pseudoscientific beliefs related to the interpretation of information vary before and after social quarantine? Objectives: This research aims to examine the psychological effects of social quarantine on the psychotic phenotype and pseudoscientific beliefs-experiences of the general nonclinical population. The following hypothesis was posed: social quarantine alters the levels of magical thinking, pseudoscientific beliefs and anomalous perceptions due to quarantine. Methods: A pre-and posttest analysis design was applied based on the difference in means, and complementary Bayesian estimation was performed. A total of 174 Spanish subjects responded to different questionnaires that evaluated psychopathological risks based on psychotic phenotypes, pseudoscientific beliefs and experiences before and after quarantine. Results: Significant differences were obtained for the variables positive psychotic symptoms, depressive symptoms, and certain perceptual alterations (e.g., cenesthetic perceptions), and a significant increase in pseudoscientific beliefs was also observed. The perceptual disturbances that increased the most after quarantine were those related to derealization and depersonalization. However, paranoid perceptions showed the highest increase, doubling the initial standard deviation. These high increases could be related to the delimitation of physical space during social quarantine and distrust towards information communicated by the government to the population. Is it possible that social alarmism generated by the excess of information and pseudoscientific information has increased paranoid perceptual alterations? Conclusions: Measures taken after quarantine indicate that perceptual disturbances, subclinical psychotic symptoms and beliefs in the pseudoscience have increased. We discuss which elements of quarantine coincide with the social marginality theory and its clinical repercussions.

Measuring Psychosocial Reactions to COVID-19: The COVID Reaction Scales (COVID-RS) as a New Assessment Tool

“…The items were written taking into account 4 sources of information: (1) the theories related to coping and attachment styles (see Ainsworth and Bowlby, 1991); (2) the statistical evidence describing the changes in information consumption during the COVID-19 crisis (e.g., Pulido et al, 2020b); (3) the loneliness model proposed by de Jong-Gierveld and Kamphuis (1985); and (4) the empirical evidence regarding the most common pathological behaviors during the first social quarantine (see Escolà-Gascón et al, 2020). Table 2 summarizes the clinical indicators of the COVID-RS to specify more clearly the relationship between each construct and item.…”

“…Likewise, a sharp increase in compulsive buying of hygienic products (especially toilet paper, which was sold out in most supermarkets) was reported (see Pagano et al, 2020;Zhou et al, 2020). This type of behavior is related to herd behavior and the pseudoscientific beliefs that the general population have developed in response to the uncertainty surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic (see Escolà-Gascón et al, 2020). Some authors ask whether these behaviors can be explained by the generalized panic and collective fear that the population has perceived in the face of the coronavirus crisis (see Khan et al, 2020).…”

“…In general, during the early phases of the pandemic, numerous publications noted significant increases in levels of anxiety and depression, as well as a growing trend of irrational behaviors in the general population (e.g., Ahorsu et al, 2020;Brooks et al, 2020;Lee, 2020;López and Rodó, 2020;Shanafelt et al, 2020). Once the international social quarantining measures were lifted (i.e., reopening of borders between the countries of the European Union), the social and psychiatric consequences of this crisis became more complex to analyze (e.g., Escolà-Gascón et al, 2020;Frías et al, 2020). The main reason is that there are still no behavioral and psychosocial markers that allow effective decisions to be made to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and safeguard the quality of life of the population.…”

“…This can have very negative effects on how the population reacts to the pandemic, which could lead to failed preventive health measures against the advancing virus. For example, Escolà-Gascón et al (2020) found that pseudoscientific beliefs and positive psychotic symptoms had increased significantly after a social quarantine of 57 days (the study was conducted with a Spanish population; bear in mind that the duration of the quarantine varies according to the legislation and the situation of each country). Determining the social consequences of collective psychosis related to the consumption of information is something that is still in the process of analysis, and more results based on scientific evidence are required to reach a conclusive conclusion (see Van Rheenen et al, 2020).…”

“…These three factors are directly related to the psychological well-being of the population and the decisions that each person makes regarding how to react to this crisis (e.g., Escolà-Gascón et al, 2020). In reality, psychological decisions and psychopathological reactions were not variables taken into account in the mathematical models that were developed to predict the epidemiological behavior of coronavirus transmission (see Ivorra et al, 2020).…”