Belief in a COVID-19 Conspiracy Theory as a Predictor of Mental Health and Well-Being of Health Care Workers in Ecuador: Cross-Sectional Survey Study

  1. Xi Chen
  2. Stephen X Zhang
  3. Asghar Afshar Jahanshahi
  4. Aldo Alvarez-Risco
  5. Huiyang Dai
  6. Jizhen Li
  7. Verónica García Ibarra

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Abstract

During the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, social media platforms have become active sites for the dissemination of conspiracy theories that provide alternative explanations of the cause of the pandemic, such as secret plots by powerful and malicious groups. However, the association of individuals’ beliefs in conspiracy theories about COVID-19 with mental health and well-being issues has not been investigated. This association creates an assessable channel to identify and provide assistance to people with mental health and well-being issues during the pandemic.

Objective

Our aim was to provide the first evidence that belief in conspiracy theories regarding the COVID-19 pandemic is a predictor of the mental health and well-being of health care workers.

Methods

We conducted a survey of 252 health care workers in Ecuador from April 10 to May 2, 2020. We analyzed the data regarding distress and anxiety caseness with logistic regression and the data regarding life and job satisfaction with linear regression.

Results

Among the 252 sampled health care workers in Ecuador, 61 (24.2%) believed that the virus was developed intentionally in a lab; 82 (32.5%) experienced psychological distress, and 71 (28.2%) had anxiety disorder. Compared to health care workers who were not sure where the virus originated, those who believed the virus was developed intentionally in a lab were more likely to report psychological distress and anxiety disorder and to have lower levels of job satisfaction and life satisfaction.

Conclusions

This paper identifies belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories as an important predictor of distress, anxiety, and job and life satisfaction among health care workers. This finding will enable mental health services to better target and provide help to mentally vulnerable health care workers during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

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  1. Version published to 10.2196/20737
  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.05.26.20113258v2 on medRxiv
  3. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.26.20113258: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: All participants provided their informed consent, participated voluntarily and could terminate the survey at any time.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Limitations and future research: There are several limitations of this study. First, the cross-sectional design limits our ability to make causal arguments about the relationship between conspiracy belief and mental health. Future research should adopt experimental designs to establish the causal relationship between conspiracy belief and mental health. Second, we only focused on healthcare workers, whose role is especially important during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in Ecuador. It is worth investigating if the effects of conspiracy belief generalize to the general population. Finally, Ecuador is a country that is suffering a serious toll from the pandemic. It remains to be seen to what extent the findings are generalizable to other countries, which face different degrees of threat from the pandemic. For instance, it may be interesting to investigate if conspiracy theory about COVID-19 predicts mental health in countries where the social and political systems are severely threatened by the pandemic, because system threat is an important cause of adopting conspiracy theory[29].

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  4. Version published to 10.1101/2020.05.26.20113258v1 on medRxiv
  5. Version published to 10.2196/preprints.20737