Kim Seoyoung, Aum TaeYoon, Lee Dong-Gwi
Yonsei Psychological Science Innovation Institute, Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Department of Psychology, Yonsei University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
PLoS One. 2024 Dec 26;19(12):e0314881. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0314881. eCollection 2024.
Although COVID-19 has been declared endemic in South Korea, there are economic and psychosocial after-effects. One of these is the prevalence of depression. Depressed adolescents and young adults struggle with insecurity, loneliness, and lack of confidence due to the life limitations imposed during the pandemic. Young South Koreans experienced deterioration in mental health because of the recurrence of mass infections. To address professionals' concerns about the lingering effects of COVID-19 on youth mental health, we text-mined young South Koreans' online posts about depression during the pandemic and the endemic phases-from February 2020 to May 2023. We used a total of 1,740 selected posts (raw data publicly available on https://github.com/kimalexis1129/PLOS_endemic_depression.git) to explore the situational triggers, additional factors, and by-products of depression that have persisted during the endemic era. We used Latent Dirichlet allocation and Dirichlet-multinomial regression topic modeling methods in conjunction with sentiment analysis and mean comparison. The results showed that the pandemic and endemic topic models shared similarities, but emerging topics showed extended adversities such as adolescents' vulnerability to eating disorders and young adults' tendency to self-isolate. Comparisons between the levels of positive and negative affect during the pandemic and endemic eras revealed no significant changes in mood. We discussed the results in comparison with SARS and MERS precedents and from general and cultural perspectives.
尽管新冠肺炎在韩国已被宣布为地方性流行病，但仍存在经济和社会心理方面的后遗症。其中之一就是抑郁症的普遍存在。抑郁的青少年和年轻人因疫情期间实施的生活限制而挣扎于不安全感、孤独感和缺乏自信之中。由于大规模感染的反复出现，韩国年轻人的心理健康状况恶化。为了解决专业人士对新冠肺炎持续影响青少年心理健康的担忧，我们对韩国年轻人在疫情流行和地方性流行阶段（2020年2月至2023年5月）关于抑郁症的网络帖子进行了文本挖掘。我们总共使用了1740篇选定的帖子（原始数据可在https://github.com/kimalexis1129/PLOS_endemic_depression.git上公开获取）来探究在地方性流行时代持续存在的抑郁症的情境触发因素、其他因素和附带影响。我们将潜在狄利克雷分配和狄利克雷多项回归主题建模方法与情感分析和均值比较结合使用。结果表明，疫情流行和地方性流行的主题模型有相似之处，但新出现的主题显示出更多的困境，如青少年易患饮食失调症以及年轻人有自我隔离的倾向。对疫情流行和地方性流行时代积极和消极情绪水平的比较显示，情绪没有显著变化。我们将结果与非典和中东呼吸综合征的先例进行了比较，并从一般和文化的角度进行了讨论。
