Usage of Social Media and Smartphone Application in Assessment of Physical and Psychological Well-Being of Individuals in Times of a Major Air Pollution Crisis

Zhang, Melvyn WB; Ho, Cyrus SH; Fang, Pan; Lu, Yanxia; Ho, Roger CM

As there was no previous study on the physical and psychological impact of the haze crisis, the interpretation of our findings mainly relied on previous studies on infectious disease outbreak, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in the Southeast Asia. Our findings were similar to a study reported by Lee et al [16] on the psychological responses of pregnant women during the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong in 2003. Lee et al [16] reported that anticipatory worries were common among the pregnant women during the SARS outbreak; overestimation of risk led to higher level of anxiety and the levels of depression were similar between the SARS and pre-SARS outbreak cohorts. In our study, the inverse association between the perceived dangerous PSI values and mean scores of intrusion, hyperarousal, and overall psychological impact suggest that people who have lower threshold for health hazard are vulnerable to greater psychological impact when air quality deteriorates. The low threshold for health hazard and the number of physical symptoms independently determine psychological impact and these factors may contribute to the anticipatory anxiety. Our study did not find a difference in the levels of psychological impact between respondents who filled the questionnaire out during the periods with low and high PSI values. Lee et al [16] found that people tended to receive more social support during the SARS outbreak. We did not measure social support in our study but it may be possible that people would receive more social support from their families during the haze outbreak, as they tend to stay at home or participate in indoor activities with families.