Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Date of this Version
2-19-2021
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Mental health has been a major concern worldwide even before the emergence of novel coronavirus. The evolving nature of the virus and the fatality rate has increased the psychological distress among people across all age groups. This study is an attempt to explore the research productivity on mental health research during COVID-19 pandemic to combat the disease by means of enhancing awareness and preventive measures as some countries are going through the second wave of the viral attack. The research contribution on mental health during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic appears to be slow in pace not going with the need of the time. During the study period 1st January 2020 to 5th November 2020, only 1690 scholarly documents were published with average number of articles per author less than one. United States emerged as the most prolific country in the research on ‘Mental Health’ followed by China and U.K. Most of the scholarly output were predominantly in English language and most of the universities were in the forefront in conducting research on mental health. Many researchers got funding encouragement from multiple agencies for their research on mental health stimulating collaborative research trend with Canadian Institutes of Health Research being the top funder. Most of the research publications got concentrated in only few top ranked journals in the field of mental health. These findings reinforce the need to increase the research on mental health.