Experimental, ineffective, cytotoxic vaccines that will magnetize people and cause serious side effects… Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, false information has been spreading rapidly and extensively on social networks. These infos deal specifically with the dangerousness of vaccines.

According to a study conducted by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and published in jama network openPeople with depression will be especially sensitive to this conspiratorial discourse. In question: his general bias towards negativity, which would lead him to be more receptive to misinformation related to vaccines against COVID-19.

“One of the remarkable things about depression is that it can cause people to see the world differently, a little unlike rose-tinted glasses. In other words, for some depressed people, the world is a special one. looks like a dark and dangerous place, The study’s lead author, Roy H. Perlis, explains. We wondered whether people who see the world this way are also more likely to believe misinformation about vaccines. If you already think the world is a dangerous place, you may be more inclined to believe that vaccines are dangerous – even if they are not.”

A link between depression and adherence to fake news about vaccines

To find out, the researchers looked at the responses of 15,464 adults living in the United States to an online survey conducted between May and July 2021. The participants also completed a questionnaire measuring symptoms of depression.

The results showed that participants with moderate major depressive symptoms were more likely to support at least one out of four false statements about Covid-19 vaccines present in the survey, and those who supported these statements were more likely to were less likely to agree. Specifically, the presence of depression was associated with a 2.2 times higher likelihood of believing misinformation about vaccines, and people who followed at least one fake news were half as likely to be vaccinated and to report vaccine resistance. The probability was 2.7 times higher.

Treating depression to limit the scope of false information

The researchers then analyzed data from a subset of 2,809 people who agreed to answer a new survey two months later. People with depression in the first survey were again twice as likely to endorse new misinformation compared to the previous survey.

“While we cannot conclude that depression caused this sensitivity, examining the second wave of data allowed us to at least find that depression preceded misinformation. In other words, it was not misinformation.” Which made people more depressed”, emphasizes Professor Perlis.

The first author emphasizes that these findings do not in any way blame people with depression for misinformation, but rather suggest that depression may make people more vulnerable to misinformation. “By addressing the extremely high levels of depression in this country during the pandemic, we can reduce people’s susceptibility to misinformation”, hopefully the researchers, who recall that this is an observational study, that cannot prove that depression is the cause of vulnerability to fake news.