How and When COVID-19-related News Consumption Relates to Mental Health Complaints-A Cross-Sectional Study.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Since the emergence of COVID-19, a substantial body of research has been published regarding its psychological impacts, particularly on young adults. COVID-19-related news consumption has been shown to be an important factor in this regard. However, extant research is largely exploratory in nature and lacks a more nuanced examination of this relationship. Against this backdrop, in the present study, we draw on terror management theory to develop and test a moderated mediation model to examine how and when COVID-19-related news consumption may relate to young adults' mental health complaints. Specifically, we hypothesize that COVID-19-triggered mortality salience moderates the positive indirect association between COVID-19-related news consumption and mental health complaints through COVID-19-related knowledge, such that the indirect relationship is more pronounced when the level of COVID-19-triggered mortality salience is relatively high compared to low.

METHODS

A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 250 student participants from two public universities in the capital of Bangladesh.

RESULTS

Results support our proposed hypotheses. Moderated mediation analysis showed that the hypothesized model accounted for approximately 31% of the variance in mental health complaints.

CONCLUSION

Our study elucidates a nuanced mechanism of how and when COVID-19-related news consumption relates to mental health complaints by presenting a moderated mediation model. Our study findings may inform further research related to the global pandemic and mental health.