Background
In May 2023 the head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) officially declared “an end to COVID-19 as a public emergency” (1). Nevertheless, the pandemic, during its course and afterwards, has had a substantial impact on people’s physical and mental health. This search strategy aims to identify literature that addresses the impact of covid on people’s psychological wellbeing and overall mental health. Constructed for use in Journals@Ovid by the Customer Success Team at Wolters Kluwer Health Learning Research and Practice (WKHLRP), equivalent searches have been similarly constructed for Ovid MEDLINE and APA PsycInfo. Points to note are as follows.
1. Full-Text Databases and Full Text Searching: In contrast to the bibliographic databases Ovid MEDLINE and APA PyscInfo, Journals@Ovid is a full-text database. It too provides a degree of bibliographic data on the articles contained in it, but its strength is that it contains the full text of articles as well as their accompanying images, graphics and tables.
As a resource, Journals@Ovid is a database that aggregates hundreds of scientific, technical and medical journals from over 50 publishers and societies. Given this heterogeneity there is no single controlled vocabulary against which the full text content is indexed. Nevertheless, it is possible to search directly in and across the full text of the articles within the database using the word indexed Full Text field (TX).
Usefully, the Full Text field (TX) is also one of the default fields for the Unqualified Search or Multi-Field (MP) search. This is why the .mp search option has been used in all four search lines and paragraphs (see below) of the search strategy being discussed here.
2. Search Strategy Formats: Line-by-Line or Paragraph-Based: There are differing schools of thought as to how to build a search strategy. Some prefer a line-by-line approach. Others are more inclined to enter the search terms one after another in an ongoing stream, separating out search terms and database instructions using combinations of brackets (parentheses) and Boolean Operators (OR, AND, NOT) – the paragraph approach. Each format has merits and disadvantages. The example given here is a hybrid of the two approaches.
Search Stategy
1. (covid-19 or SARS-CoV-2 or coronavirus).mp and Psycholog.mp.
2. (mental health or mental disorders or mental processes or anxiety disorders or "disruptive, impulse control, and conduct disorders" or "feeding and eating disorders" or mood disorders or personality disorders or sleep wake disorders or substance-related disorders or "trauma and stressor related disorders" or stress disorders, traumatic or hypochondriasis or resilience, psychological or Eating Disorders).mp
3. ("Alcohol abus$3" or "alcohol use$2" or Anxiety or Bereavement or Conflict$2 or Compulsion or coping or Cyberchondria or Depression or despair or "disruptive behavior" or Distress or "emotion regulation" or "financial strain" or Hypochondriasis or Isolation or Loneliness or "mental health" or mental or Mood or Obsession or "obsessive-compulsive" or "obsessive compulsive disorder" or overwhelmed or Panic or Posttraumatic or "Post trauma$3" or "prolonged grief" or Psychiatric or "psychiatric disorder" or "psychological well-being" or Psychologic or "psychological impact" or psychoses or psychosis or Ptsd or resilience or resilient or "social isolation" or Stress$3 or "substance use" or "Substance abuse" or Suicide or Suicidal or telepsychiatry or traumatic or violence or worry or "food security" or "community psychology" or fear or "self-harm" or bereavement or "death wish" or "sleep-wake disorder$1" or grief or "poor-sleep" or burnout or trichotillomania or mania$1 or traumatization or coronaphobia or phobia$1 or "impulse control" or "social support" or "moral distress" or "eating disorder$1").mp
4. (1 AND (2 or 3)
Reviewers
Primary: Michael Fanning
Secondary: Charlotte Viken
Review Date: 2024-05-08
Expiry Date: 2025-05-08
Original search produced by:
Ovid Training Team
References:
1. WHO chief declares end to COVID-19 as a global health emergency
https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/05/1136367
2. APA Thesaurus of Psychological Index Terms®
https://www.apa.org/pubs/databases/training/thesaurus
Citation:
Ovid Customer Support, Covid and Mental Health – Journals@Ovid, Ovid Expert Searches Portal, Version: 8th May 2024, Visited: 11th May 2024.