Those who are depressed tend to believe more easily in fake news about anti-Covid vaccines. This is what emerges from a research conducted at some American centers including Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital and recently published in Jama Network Open. The goal of the research, conducted between May and July 2021, was to establish whether depressive symptoms are associated with a greater likelihood of believing false information about Covid vaccines. To do this, an online survey was conducted on 15,500 adults with moderate or severe depressive symptoms, analyzing their probability of believing at least one of the fake news circulating about Covid vaccines.
The four hoaxes protagonists of the survey
Four fake news object of the survey and related to vaccines for Covid-19: they alter the DNA; contain microchips that could track people; they contain the lung tissue of aborted fetuses; they can cause infertility. At the end of the survey, all respondents were told what the true answers were to prevent the research itself from facilitating the spread of disinformation. The first conclusion that the team of researchers reached is that the levels of depression are at least three times higher than those of the period before the Covid-19 pandemic. Additionally, participants with depressive symptoms were found to be more likely to believe at least one of the four false claims about Covid-19 vaccines to be true. “The fake news examined are mostly negative and it is clear that a depressed person tends to believe more easily in this kind of news”, he comments Enrico Zanalda, co-president of the Italian Society of Psychiatry (Sip) and director of the Asl Torino 3 mental health department. “The depressed person has less confidence in the future and tends to see everything negative because he has little confidence in both the present and the future, in medicine and science “.
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Not only that: those who approved these claims were also less likely to be vaccinated. In particular, the presence of depression was associated with a 2.2 times greater likelihood of believing false information. Furthermore, respondents who believed at least one of the fake news were half as likely to be vaccinated and 2.7 times as likely to be against the vaccine. “The anti-Covid vaccine – continues Zanalda – in this historical moment is an important element in everyone’s life and has a very important emotional component. Those suffering from severe depression do not even trust the vaccine because they do not care about their health and even less that of the others. He doesn’t even worry about not getting the Green pass because he doesn’t feel the need for a social life “.
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The researchers also analyzed data from the subgroup of 2,809 respondents who responded to a subsequent survey two months later. It was found that subjects who were found to be depressed in the first survey were twice as likely to believe false information than in the survey two months earlier. “Although we cannot conclude that the depression caused this trend,” he said Roy H. Perlis, principal author of the research – analyzing the data of a remote survey has at least allowed us to understand that depression came before fake news, that is, it was not disinformation that made people more depressed “.
In Italy more depressed adolescents, more anxious adults
Even in Italy, the pandemic has caused an increase in social unrest: “This fourth wave has caused frustration and an increase in anxiety, depression, insomnia, lack of confidence and hope for tomorrow. We are seeing an increase in reactive depression, the one caused by a painful and traumatic event, especially in adolescents and up to 25 years, while among adults cases of anxiety increase. Overall we can estimate an increase of 25% of cases “, points out Zanalda.
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According to the researchers, these data offer more motivation to understand how important it is that all those who need it have access to treatment for depression and anxiety. “Our finding suggests that by addressing the extremely high levels of depression during Covid, we could reduce people’s susceptibility to misinformation,” says Perlis. The president of the SIP also agrees on this: “If we make people more objective to external stimuli and news, we can more easily convince them to collaborate not only on vaccines for Covid, but in general for all pathologies. Depressed patients, in fact. , they are the ones who follow the therapies the least and have the worst prognosis. If we treat these patients in the right way – continues Zanalda – we make them more collaborative and we also contribute to improving public health “.