'Panic Attack' Searches Reached All-Time High During The Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused anxiety to sky-rocket, if internet searches are anything to go by. Panic attacks are an exaggeration of the body entering “fight or flight” mode – as a person tries to take in more oxygen, their breathing quickens and their body releases hormones like adrenaline which can cause the heart to beat faster and muscles to tense.
A new study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, finds evidence of a record high in potential anxiety or panic attacks based on Google searches. Researchers analyzed search queries that mentioned “panic attack” or “anxiety attack” emerging from the US between January 2004 and May 2020.
These included queries like “am I having a panic attack?,” “signs of anxiety attack” or “anxiety attack symptoms.” After President Donald Trump first declared a national emergency in the U.S. on March 13 this year, the team discovered anxiety related searches reached record highs.
Benjamin Althouse, a principal scientist at the Institute for Disease Modeling, which was involved in the study, says “searches for anxiety and panic attacks were the highest they’ve ever been in over 16 years of historical search data.”
Searches tended to peak when national guidelines were rolled out in the U.S., the team found. The largest increase in queries occurred between March 16 and April 14, coinciding with the roll out of national social distancing guidelines.
This also seemed to occur globally: Google search insights for the UK suggest a similar trend, with searches for “panic attacks” and “anxiety attack symptoms” peaking in March and April respectively, HuffPost UK found.
Psychotherapist and author Joshua Fletcher tells HuffPost UK he saw a spike in anxiety-related queries from clients as a result of COVID-19.
Referrals tended to increase when lockdown measures were lifted, rather than enforced, he says. This, he believes, is because during the initial lockdown our lives were quite...
