Impact of Covid-19 on Mental Health: A Bibliometric Assessment of Publications from India

Aim: The paper assesses the India’s research output on “Impact of Covid-19 on Mental Health” indexed in Scopus database. Materials and Methods: The Scopus database was used to search for the articles published from India. Results: The search showed that since the onset of the pandemic upto 24th of April 2021, 1210 publications emerged from India, amounting to 6.87% share of the global output on the topic and averaged 5.97 citations per paper. India stood at 5th position in terms of number of publications on mental health, with highest number of publications emerging from United States (26.9%), followed by United Kingdom (13.35%), China (9.83%) and Italy (8.27%). About one-third (30.91%) of the publications involved international collaborations, with maximum number of collaborations were with United States, followed by United Kingdom, Australia, Italy, Canada, and Brazil. The most common keywords in the research included, ‘mental health’, followed by ‘anxiety’ and ‘depression’. The research output came from 478 organizations, with maximum research coming from National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS), Bangalore, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi and Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education & Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh. About three-fourth (76.85%) of the mental health research emerged from institute other than these 3 institutes. Five out of the 10 most productive authors and 5 out of the most impactful authors were from institutes other than the 3 major institutes. Conclusion: To conclude, this bibliometric analysis suggest that, researchers from India contributed to about 7% of the global mental health research on Covid-19 and India stood at 5th position among the various countries in terms of global mental health research on Covid-19.