The Role of Social Media in the Advent of COVID-19 Pandemic: Crisis Management, Mental Health Challenges and Implications

Abstract

Background: This study focuses on how educating people through social media platforms can help reduce the mental health consequences of the COVID-19 to manage the global health crisis. The pandemic has posed a global mental health crisis, and correct information is indispensable to dispel uncertainty, fear, and mental stress to unify global communities in collective combat against COVID-19 disease worldwide. Mounting studies specified that manifestly endless coronavirusrelated newsfeeds and death numbers considerably increased the risk of global mental health issues. Social media provided positive and negative data, and the COVID-19 has resulted in a worldwide infodemic. It has eroded public trust and impeded virus restraint, which outlived the coronavirus pandemic itself. Methods: The study incorporated the narrative review analysis based on the existing literature related to mental health problems using the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) approach to minimize the COVID-19 adverse consequences on global mental health. The study performed a search of the electronic databases available at PsycINFO, PubMed, and LISTA. This research incorporates the statistical data related to the COVID-19 provided by the WHO, John Hopkins University, and Pakistani Ministry of Health. Results: Pakistan reported the second-highest COVID-19 cases within South Asia, the fifthhighest number of cases in Asia after Iran, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the 14th highest recorded cases, as of October 14, 2020. Pakistan effectively managed the COVID-19 pandemic in the second wave. It stands at the eighth-highest number of confirmed cases in Asia, the 3rd-highest in South Asia, and the 28th-highest number of established patients globally, as of February20, 2021. Conclusion:The COVID-19 has resulted in over 108.16 million confirmed cases, deaths over 2.374 million, and a recovery of 80.16 million people worldwide, as of February 12, 2021. This study focused on exploring the COVID-19 pandemic's adverse effects on global public health and the indispensable role of social media to provide the correct information in the COVID-19 health crisis. The findings' generalizability offers helpful insight for crisis management and contributes to the scientific literature. The results might provide a stepping-stone for conduct future empirical studies by including other factors to conclude exciting developments.

COVID-19 Preventive Behaviors in Pre-hospital Emergency Personnel: Application of Protection Motivation Theory

“…In the present study, only 4.4% of people reported receiving information about covid-19 from scienti c papers, which shows that pre-hospital emergency personnel does not follow up scienti c papers well in this study and learn more through cyberspace. In the study of Jaffar et al [34] and Zare [35], cyberspaces were the most important source and reference for receiving information that is closely related to the results of the present study.…”

Demographic and clinical characteristics of severe Covid-19 infections: a cross-sectional study from Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Iran

“…Meta-analyses report pooled prevalence of 8.4 and 12% for cardiovascular disorders, and 8.0 to 9.7% for diabetes [ 23 , 33 ]. Assessing the association between patients’ awareness of Covid-19 and risk factors for severe disease and adherence to prevention protocols should be evaluated in future studies [ 34 – 38 ]. Using telehealth-based services during the COVID-19 pandemic may be useful in this regard [ 39 ].…”

Epidemiological characteristics and initial spatiotemporal visualisation of COVID-19 in a major city in the Middle East

“…Lockdown of cities can be a great solution to control and prevent the spread of the disease [ 60 – 62 ]. In Iran, the lack of public awareness promoted the rapid spread of COVID-19 and the rate of hospital admission and mortality increased dramatically.…”