Two minutes of bad news about Covid makes people emotional worse.

Just two minutes of bad news about Covid-19 is enough to make people’s emotional state worse, and three minutes of relaxation can reverse the process and improve their mood.

This is what a study by the Instituto do Cébro, Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein, conducted in the second half of 2020 and recently published in the Internet Interventions magazine, one of the leading scientific journals on the application of information technology in mental and behavioral health, says.

The objective was to assess how positive or negative news could interfere with the emotional state.

To reach the conclusion, researchers Elisa Kozasa and Paulo Rodrigo Bazan evaluated the results of an online experiment with 245 health professionals from Einstein, working in public and private hospitals, and 717 people from the general public, over 18 years old, recruited through of social networks.

Each participant signed a consent form and answered a questionnaire about their emotional state. Afterwards, he was drawn to receive an audio of positive or negative news about Covid-19 lasting two minutes and later had his emotional state reassessed. The researchers compared the responses to the two questionnaires.

Emotional status was measured on a scale designed to assess how anxious, stressed, hopeful, aware of emotions, angry, discouraged, happy, optimistic, and worried the participant was feeling at the time of the assessment.

“With two minutes of negative news, which basically talked about the mortality rate and deaths in Manaus, people’s emotional state worsened. Those who heard the positive ones, which at the time were about the vaccines arriving and the situations of solidarity, with people in reception and giving donations, improved the emotional “explains Kozasa.

The score was assigned to the emotional state in three different situations: before hearing news with positive or negative content, right after listening to it and after going through a 3-minute relaxation period, which consisted of relaxing the body and paying attention to breathing in a slow pace.

“After listening to the relaxation audio, the negative news group improved and what had received positive news improved even more. What we also see is important here is that even short breaks can make a difference,” says the expert .

According to the researcher, the results show that it is necessary to pay more attention to the type of news that is consumed. “They change the emotional state in two minutes. It is valid for the general population and, especially, for health professionals, considered sensitive and at risk at this time of the pandemic”, he says.

“Consuming news with negative content can potentially affect our health, especially if associated with other sources of stress common at work, contributing to the worsening of physical illnesses, such as cardiovascular ones, and mental health symptoms, such as insomnia, depression, exhaustion, anxiety, fear of transmitting infections, increased dependence on substances,” says Kozasa.

“Worse scores on the emotional questionnaire were associated with the presence of mental disorders and better scores with the practice of physical activity or meditation and yoga”, he adds.

For the researcher, it is important to balance the news that is consumed. “Of course it’s important to know what’s going on. The truth is there. Not just hearing negative news, but good things too. And maybe it’s not just news, but listening to good music, having time for entertainment and time for healthy positive things. It’s learning to focus on the important facets of life.