Mental Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Japan: Applying Topic Modeling in Daily Life Descriptions

The novel coronavirus disease pandemic is threatening not only physical but also mental health. Although some recent quantitative studies have been conducted and revealed the influence of the pandemic on mental health and its relevant factors, it is impossible to obtain and explore all possible variables strongly related to mental health. Therefore, we attempted to adopt a bottom-up approach using text mining of participants' narratives. We examined how participants' descriptions of daily life during the pandemic were categorized into various topics, and which topics were related to their mental health in a sample of 776 Japanese citizens in the general population over 18 years old. Results of a topic modeling with 2,594 unique words provided nine topics (mask, physical symptoms, children, infection anxiety, disinfection items, economic influence, remote work, going out, and change of lifestyle). Those who wrote about economic influence, physical symptoms, and disinfection items experienced lower life satisfaction and higher depression and negative affect, whereas those who mentioned their children were likely to have higher life satisfaction. This study highlighted that monitoring the mental health of individuals with economic impacts and physical symptoms may reduce the damage of COVID-19.