ICT communication with family/friends and its associations with mental health and insomnia in COVID-19 patients during hospital quarantine: a cross-sectional study in Shenzhen, China.

BACKGROUND

Information and communication technology (ICT) use can help isolated people buffer mental health burdens, but little evidence was in patients during hospital quarantine. We aimed to examine how COVID-19 patients used ICT to communicate with family/friends and its associations with their mental health and insomnia during hospital quarantine.

METHODS

This cross-sectional study involved quarantined COVID-19 Chinese patients in Shenzhen during 10 March-28 April, 2022 who reported their ICT communication with family/friends, including text messages, picture messages, short videos, voice calls, video calls, and e-mails. The associations of ICT communication with sociodemographic characteristics, mental health, and insomnia were examined using adjusted prevalence ratios (aPR). We used lower cutoffs to identify mild psychological symptoms and insomnia for early prevention and higher cutoffs of their clinical diagnoses as sensitivity analyses.

RESULTS

Among the 217 respondents (female 48.9%, 25-54 years 63.1%), the most common ICT use was text messages (72.8%), voice calls (57.1%), and video calls (53.5%). More females used picture messages (aPR 2.06), fewer older patients used text (0.68) and picture messages (0.42), and more patients with tertiary/above education levels used text messages (1.23), video calls (1.47), and picture messages (1.82) (all P ≤ 0.05). Using any or more types of ICT was associated with less depression, anxiety, post-traumatic, somatization symptoms, and insomnia (0.31-0.55 and 0.67-0.85, respectively, all P ≤ 0.001), especially using video calls (0.36-0.76, P ≤ 0.05). Similar results were found in the sensitivity analyses.

CONCLUSIONS

Hospital-quarantined COVID-19 patients using any or more types of ICT to communicate with family /friends tended to have fewer mental health problems and insomnia, especially using video calls.