The Impact of COVID-19 in Depression in Arab Twitter Users

Abstract

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic is the greatest pandemic the world has witnessed in the modern era. This has caused suffering, disruption in the lives of millions of people. Method: We got 16581 Arab tweets, whether they express depression or not, and what symptoms they contain while keeping the time series of the tweets to monitor the 1439 Arab Twitter users during the two years 2019 and 2020. We determined whether the user was depressed or not, once in 2019 and again in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic period; to determine the impact of COVID-19 on depression for each user. Result: We have found that approximately 1.18% of users were classified with depression during the year 2019, compared to 36.69% of users who were classified with depression during the 2020 "during the COVID-19 pandemic," from a database of 1439 Arab users. Conclusion: Taking care of people’s mental health during this difficult period is very important, as some measures must be taken to preserve people’s mental health in countries affected by COVID-19. Feelings of fear related to COVID-19 can affect and harm mental health, causing depression.