Culture, Clicks, and Crisis: A Global Infodemiology of Mental Health Searches in Online Arts and Entertainment Spaces

Background: The arts play a critical role in shaping public opinion and policy discourse around mental health. This study examined global public interest in mental health topics within the Arts & Entertainment (A&E) category of Google searches, focusing on temporal trends, inter-topic associations, and country-level clustering. Methods: Using a descriptive infodemiological design, monthly Relative Search Volumes (RSVs) for seven topics (2004–2025) were analyzed with time-series decomposition, ARIMA forecasting, correlation networks, and Latent Profile Analysis. Results: Results showed generally stable A&E search trends with COVID-19 spikes; searches for ADHD and anxiety increased, while schizophrenia declined. Significant seasonalities were found for ADHD, BD, MDD, schizophrenia, and mental health. Two A&E topic clusters emerged—(1) everyday mental health and (2) crisis-related concerns —with negative inter-cluster correlations. Country-level analyses revealed two A&E search clusters. Conclusion: A&E-focused infodemiology provides novel insights into cultural, temporal, and geographic patterns of arts-related mental health public interest and information seeking in the digital space.