Communicating Mental Health Support to College Students During COVID-19: An Exploration of Website Messaging.

College counseling centers are assumed to play a vital role in addressing students' mental health needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this study was to characterize the extent to which NYC metropolitan area school websites communicated to students their updated mental health service offerings, psychoeducational information related to COVID-19, and community-based resources after the abrupt end to on-campus services during the Spring semester. A total of 138 websites were analyzed. Overall, only half of the surveyed web pages provided information about remote counseling, and just under two thirds of schools (57.97%) had directions for students experiencing a mental health emergency. As predicted, enrollment size was associated with whether psychoeducation about mental health and COVID-19 and information about remote counseling were available on a school's website. In both cases, medium-sized schools were the most likely to have these resources available on their websites as compared to small and large-sized schools. College counseling center web pages should include robust and current information that targets schools' diverse student bodies.

Climate change on YouTube: A potential platform for youth learning.

Background: Climate change is one of the most critical threats to our society. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to describe the content of the most viewed climate change videos on YouTube. Methods: The term "climate change" was used to search on YouTube to garner a sample of the 100most widely-viewed videos. Videos in a language other than English, or considered irrelevant, were excluded. Using a fact sheet from National Aeronautics and Space Administration, content categories were created and successively coded. Results: The mean number of views for the 100 videos evaluated was 231,140.2 views (SD=718, 399.5) and the mean length was 12.1 minutes (SD= 24.1). Most videos were uploaded by a news source (77.0%), included a belief that climate change is happening (77.0%), and mentioned the impact of climate change on the environment (71.0%). Only one-third of the videos mentioned how to prevent climate change (33.0%). More than half focused on a specific environment and, of those, 47.2% specifically focused on cities. Compared to videos that did not focus on a specific environment, the videos with an environmental focus were more often intended for adults (87.3% vs. 53.3%, P≤0.001). Conclusion: This study highlights the need for climate change YouTube videos intended for youth. Targeting youth may lead to engagement of younger generations in climate change discourse and inspire climate action. Further research is needed to determine the effectiveness of YouTube as a platform for educational videos on climate change.

News coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic: Missed opportunities to promote health sustaining behaviors.

BACKGROUND: Given that individuals may make health decisions based on mass media coverage, and given that such decisions have broad consequences in the case of highly contagious infectious disease, it is imperative that public health practitioners are aware of mass media coverage on emerging health threats such as COVID-19. The purpose of this study was to examine the content of news segments covering COVID-19 posted on-line. METHODS: Using the Google Videos function on a cleared browser, all videos identified from January and February, 2020 were archived by URL for analysis. After applying exclusion criteria, a total of 401 remained, comprising the sample. Content categories derived from trusted sources were applied to assess the content of broadcast news segments pertaining to COVID-19 on Google Videos. RESULTS: The most common topic mentioned across all videos was death and the death rate (43.6%) and many connoted anxieties surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak (37.4%). Critically important information about the prevention of COVID-19 spread received little attention. For example, only 3.0% of videos discussed coughing into or blowing one's nose into a tissue and throwing the tissue away, 6.2% talked about wearing a facemask when caring for the ill, and 8.8% covered disinfecting highly touched objects and surfaces. International videos more often presented captions and English subtitles (with and without narration) (7.8% vs. 0.9%, p = 0.018) and even more frequently discussed death and the death rate associated with COVID-19 (56.9% vs. 41.7%, p = 0.04). CONCLUSION: Coupled with the resultant increase in negative emotion, the majority of videos missed an opportunity to reframe messages to encourage and promote coping strategies and health sustaining behaviors. Future videos should avoid contributing to negative emotion.