Abstract
Despite significant potential for providing insight to private perceptions and behaviors, search engine data has yet to be utilized as a means of gauging the U.S. public's interest and understanding of mental health in the context of gun violence and politics. An analysis of Google Trends revealed that Mental health searches increased in volume starting in the beginning of the current decade. Notably, both "mental health" and "gun(s)" were searched with greater frequency the week after the mass shooting events occurred. Related searches after the event also observed a significant increase in interest in mental health and gun regulation, legal reform, mass shootings, and gun(s). Results suggest that the American public's perception of mental illness increasingly incorporates associations with themes of violence and politics, which becomes more apparent surrounding mass shooting events. Future studies are needed to determine implications for stigmatization of vulnerable groups, and possible relations to media coverage.
Highlights
The media has increased its coverage of mental health in recent years [1]
Related searches for yearly peaks were examined in order to better understand in what context mental health was being searched
Searches for mental health in relation to politics/government and gun regulation increased in proportion to other topics of interest
Summary
The media has increased its coverage of mental health in recent years [1]. Concurrently, the United States has seen a stark increase in gun violence events [2,3,4]. We evaluated whether searches related to guns and mental health changed the week after a mass shooting event, and whether the volume of these searches increased after the event In this way, the investigation provides a perspective on individuals’ private behavior, and possible effects that violence and gun politics may have on the manner that mental health is perceived on a population level. The situations under which individuals perform Google searches provide a certain degree of Gauging public interest in mental health, politics and violence in the context of mass shootings anonymity. It was of interest to determine whether searches related to mental health increased for certain subject domains (Law, Politics/Government, Crime/Violence, Mass Shootings, Stigma, Gun(s)) over time. We analyzed how related searches for these key words (i.e. “gun(s)” and “mental health”) and relevant subject domains (Law, Politics/Government, Crime/Violence, Mass Shootings, Stigma, Gun(s), Mental health) manifested the week before versus after the events
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