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ublic health measures to limit the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) include requirements not to leave home except for specified purposes, to work from home when practical, to limit proximity to other people, to not visit residential aged care homes, to limit the number of people at social events (weddings, funerals, celebrations), to restrict interstate and international travel, and to accept the enforcement of these restrictions. The mental health consequences of these measures are likely to be unevenly distributed across the community because they also depend on individual social and economic circumstances. A recent position paper 1 summarised international expert opinion on research priorities for mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first recommendation was to gather high quality population level data on its mental health effects. The aim of our study was to assess the mental health of people in Australia during the first month of COVID-19-related restrictions. Our specific objectives were to estimate population prevalence rates of clinically significant symptoms of depression, generalised anxiety, thoughts of being better off dead, increased irritability, and high optimism about the future; to estimate the prevalence of direct experiences of COVID-19, loss of employment caused by COVID-19 restrictions, concern about contracting COVID-19, and major disadvantage because of the restrictions; and to assess associations between these experiences and mental health symptoms. Methods A short, anonymous survey (estimated completion time, 8 minutes) of people living in Australia and aged at least 18 years was available on the Monash University website (https:// www.monash.edu/medic ine/living-with-covid-19-restr ictio nssurvey) from 3 April 2020 (four days after national stage two COVID-19 restrictions were announced by the Prime Minister; phase one restrictions had been gradually introduced during March) until midnight on 2/3 May 2020 (further information: online Supporting Information). Mental health Psychological symptoms experienced during the preceding fortnight were assessed with the Patient Health Questionnaire 9 (PHQ-9) and the Generalised Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7). The PHQ-9 2 is an easily understood scale that asks respondents to rate their experience of nine symptoms from 0 (not experienced) to 3 (experienced nearly every day); a total PHQ-9 score of 10 or more indicates clinically significant (moderate to severe) symptoms, while scores of 5-9 indicate mild symptoms. The GAD-7 3 is an easily understood scale that asks respondents to rate their experience of seven symptoms of anxiety with the same response options as the PHQ-9; a total GAD-7 score of 10 or more indicate clinically significant (moderate to severe) symptoms, while scores of 5-9 indicate mild symptoms. Optimism about the future was assessed with a visual analogue scale (from 0, not at all optimistic, to 10, extremely optimistic).

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BackgroundDepression and anxiety are recognised increasingly as serious public health problems among women in low- and lower-middle income countries. The aim of this study was to validate the 21-item Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS21) for use in screening for these common mental disorders among rural women with young children in the North of Vietnam.MethodsThe DASS-21 was translated from English to Vietnamese, culturally verified, back-translated and administered to women who also completed, separately, a psychiatrist-administered Structured Clinical Interview for DSM IV Axis 1 diagnoses of depressive and anxiety disorders. The sample was a community-based representative cohort of adult women with young children living in Ha Nam Province in northern Viet Nam. Cronbach’s alpha, Exploratory Factor Analyses (EFA) and Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analyses were performed to identify the psychometric properties of the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress subscales and the overall scale.ResultsComplete data were available for 221 women. The internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) of each sub-scale and the overall scale were high, ranging from 0.70 for the Stress subscale to 0.88 for the overall scale, but EFA indicated that the 21 items all loaded on one factor. Scores on each of the three sub-scales, and the combinations of two or three of them were able to detect the common mental disorders of depression and anxiety in women with a sensitivity of 79.1% and a specificity of 77.0% at the optimal cut off of >33. However, they did not distinguish between those experiencing only depression or only anxiety.ConclusionsThe total score of the 21 items of the DASS21-Vietnamese validation appears to be comprehensible and sensitive to detecting common mental disorders in women with young children in primary health care in rural northern Vietnam and therefore might also be useful to screen for these conditions in other resource-constrained settings.