Culture, Clicks, and Crisis: What Google Searches Reveal About Mental Health in Arts and Entertainment
Article Information
Cleofas, J. V. (2026). Culture, clicks, and crisis: A global infodemiology of mental health searches in online arts and Entertainment spaces. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, (Ahead of Print). https://doi.org/10.1177/00207640251415505
What this study is about
Mental health is now part of popular culture. Films, songs, streaming series, celebrity interviews, novels, visual art, and social media conversations often include stories about depression, anxiety, suicide, ADHD, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, trauma, and recovery. For many people, arts and entertainment are not only sources of leisure. They can also become entry points for understanding mental health.
This study asks: What can global Google searches tell us about mental health interest within arts and entertainment spaces?
Instead of looking at general Google searches about mental health, the study used Google Trends filtered through the Arts & Entertainment category. This matters because a search for “depression” in this category may not refer to clinical information alone. It may reflect interest in a film, song, character, celebrity disclosure, fan discussion, or media portrayal related to depression.
The study therefore treats arts and entertainment as a cultural pathway for mental health information-seeking.
What the researcher did
This was a descriptive infodemiological study. Infodemiology means studying patterns of health information online. In this case, the researcher examined Google search behavior related to mental health topics within arts and entertainment contexts.
The study analyzed monthly global Relative Search Volumes, or RSVs, from January 2004 to June 2025 for seven topics:
- mental health,
- major depressive disorder,
- anxiety disorder,
- bipolar disorder,
- attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,
- schizophrenia, and
- suicide.
The analysis had three major parts.
First, the study examined trends, seasonality, and forecasts using time-series methods, including STL decomposition and ARIMA forecasting.
Second, it examined correlations among topics to see which mental health searches rose and fell together.
Third, it used Latent Profile Analysis to classify countries into groups based on their search patterns. The final country-level sample included 199 countries and inhabited territories after excluding very small jurisdictions with sparse Google Trends data.
What the study found
1) Most searches were stable, but COVID-19 created spikes
From 2004 to 2025, most mental health topics in the Arts & Entertainment category showed relatively stable search patterns. However, the study found visible spikes during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially around 2020–2021.
This makes sense. During the pandemic, many people spent more time online, consumed more digital entertainment, and experienced higher levels of psychological distress. Arts and entertainment may have become a way to process anxiety, isolation, grief, and uncertainty.
2) ADHD and anxiety searches increased
The study found that ADHD and anxiety showed upward search trajectories in recent years.
This may reflect growing public awareness, more media representations, more online conversations, and increased visibility of ADHD and anxiety in streaming content, celebrity narratives, and social media. In everyday terms, these topics may have become more culturally searchable.
3) Schizophrenia searches declined
In contrast, schizophrenia searches declined over time and were forecasted to be less stable.
This is important because schizophrenia has long been represented in problematic ways in film and media, often linked to fear, danger, or misunderstanding. A decline in arts-and-entertainment-related searches may suggest changing cultural salience, reduced media visibility, or shifting public attention toward other mental health topics.
4) Several topics showed seasonality
The study found significant seasonal patterns for ADHD, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, and mental health. ADHD, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia peaked in April. Major depressive disorder peaked in May. General mental health peaked in October, which may connect to global mental health awareness activities.
Seasonality means that interest does not move randomly. People may search for certain mental health topics more during particular times of the year. These patterns could be linked to school calendars, awareness months, weather, media releases, or cultural events.
5) Two mental health topic clusters emerged
The correlation analysis found two broad topic clusters.
The first cluster included mental health, anxiety, and ADHD. These topics were strongly and positively correlated with one another. The study interprets them as everyday mental health concerns: topics often discussed in relation to self-understanding, daily functioning, identity, school, work, productivity, stress, and emotional life.
The second cluster included suicide, major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. These were linked through weaker to moderate positive correlations and were interpreted as more crisis-related concerns.
Interestingly, several topics across the two clusters were negatively correlated. For example, anxiety and ADHD were negatively associated with major depressive disorder and suicide. This suggests that public attention may shift between different mental health narratives rather than rising uniformly across all topics.
6) Country-level searches formed two profiles
The Latent Profile Analysis found two country-level search profiles.
The first was called High Overall Search Behavior and included 29 countries. These countries showed higher arts-and-entertainment search interest for several topics, especially anxiety, major depressive disorder, ADHD, and suicide.
The second was called Baseline Search Behavior with Elevated Schizophrenia Interest and included 170 countries. These countries showed more moderate search levels overall, with relatively higher schizophrenia-related search interest.
The global map in the article shows that country-level patterns are geographically uneven. This means that mental health topics do not circulate through arts and entertainment in the same way everywhere.
7) The study treats arts seeking as health-related behavior
One of the study’s strongest contributions is its framing of arts and entertainment searching as a form of health-related behavior. Watching a show about depression, searching for a song about anxiety, reading about a celebrity’s mental health disclosure, or looking up a character with ADHD may all become indirect ways of learning about mental health.
This does not mean that entertainment content replaces clinical care. But it does mean that popular culture can shape what people know, fear, normalize, misunderstand, or discuss about mental health.
Bottom line
This study shows that mental health information-seeking does not happen only in hospitals, clinics, schools, or health websites. It also happens through culture. People search for mental health topics in relation to films, music, streaming shows, celebrities, books, online fandoms, and other entertainment spaces.
The key message is clear: arts and entertainment are public mental health spaces. If mental health narratives circulate through culture, then public health practitioners, educators, artists, journalists, and platform designers should take those narratives seriously.
Policy/practice recommendations
- Treat arts and entertainment as mental health communication spaces
Public health agencies should monitor how mental health topics appear in cultural media, not only in clinical or news settings. - Work with artists, writers, and producers
Mental health experts can collaborate with filmmakers, musicians, showrunners, authors, and content creators to improve representation and avoid harmful stereotypes. - Use search trends to time mental health campaigns
Because several topics showed seasonal peaks, mental health campaigns can be timed around periods when public interest is already higher. - Respond to “everyday” and “crisis” mental health differently
Anxiety, ADHD, and general mental health may require everyday literacy campaigns, while suicide, major depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia may require safer messaging, referral pathways, and crisis-sensitive communication. - Improve media portrayals of severe mental illness
The decline and instability in schizophrenia searches should prompt attention to how schizophrenia is represented, misunderstood, or marginalized in entertainment. - Use country profiles for targeted communication
Countries with different search profiles may need different public health messaging strategies, depending on which mental health topics are culturally salient. - Avoid overinterpreting Google Trends data
Google search data show public attention, not diagnosis, prevalence, or actual service use. These patterns should be interpreted alongside surveys, clinical data, media analysis, and qualitative research.
Glossary of key terms
- Infodemiology — The study of online health information patterns, including what people search for, when interest rises or falls, and how information circulates digitally.
- Google Trends — A tool that shows relative search interest for topics over time and across locations.
- Relative Search Volume / RSV — A normalized Google Trends score from 0 to 100, where 100 represents peak search interest for the selected time and location.
- Arts & Entertainment category — A Google Trends filter that narrows searches to entertainment and cultural contexts, such as films, music, books, shows, celebrities, and other creative media.
- Mental health topic searches — Searches related to mental health concepts, conditions, or concerns, such as anxiety, ADHD, depression, schizophrenia, or suicide.
- Time-series analysis — A method for studying how data change over time.
- STL decomposition — A technique that separates a time series into trend, seasonal, and residual components.
- Seasonality — A repeated pattern where interest rises or falls during certain months or periods.
- ARIMA forecasting — A statistical method for predicting future values in time-series data.
- Pearson correlation — A statistic that measures how strongly two variables move together.
- Correlation network — A visual map showing which topics are positively or negatively related.
- Latent Profile Analysis / LPA — A statistical method that identifies hidden groups or profiles based on patterns in data.
- High Overall Search Behavior — The country profile with higher search interest across several A&E mental health topics.
- Baseline Search Behavior with Elevated Schizophrenia Interest — The country profile with moderate overall search interest but relatively higher schizophrenia-related search interest.
- Everyday mental health concerns — Topics such as mental health, anxiety, and ADHD that may relate to daily functioning, identity, stress, and self-understanding.
- Crisis-related mental health concerns — Topics such as suicide, major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, which may be linked to more severe or urgent mental health narratives.
- Arts seeking as health behavior — The idea that engaging with arts and cultural content can support meaning-making, coping, identity, emotional regulation, and health understanding.
- Digital mental health discourse — Online conversations, searches, narratives, and content related to mental health.
- Cultural salience — The degree to which a topic is visible, meaningful, or important in public culture.
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