Abstract

COVID-19 outbreak in 2020 and intense social distancing elevated Korean people’s distress. While concerns remain after COVID-19 about the negative affect and conflicts between social groups/classes, the present study analyzed 13,433 natural text by general Korean people about their psychological struggles from January to September 2020, utilizing text mining approach including word co-occurrence analysis and DMR topic modeling. In addition, 283 websites of psychological treatment centers were reviewed for the availability of the treatment providers’ license and qualification. In results, domains of Korean people’s struggles included emotional distress, family conflicts, and struggles of children and adolescents in unstable home environment. Korean people in general expressed increased needs for treatment by experts, however less than half of the treatment providers (42.2%) had licenses deemed professional enough to meet the psychological needs. Suggestions for the treatment provision environment are provided.