Assessment of anxiety and depression symptoms in the Albanian general population during the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Albanian authorities declared mandatory stay-at-home measures, closing businesses, schools, and public places. This study aims to investigate the impact of these immediate changes on the mental well-being of the population. Methodology: Respondents ( N = 1678) aged 18–60 years were selected through a convenient sampling method. A questionnaire was administered online for 26 days, where respondents reported the time spent daily in the COVID-19 topic and filled in their generalities, the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 and Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7. Results: Findings suggest a significant negative correlation between age and anxiety scoring ( r (n = 1678) = −0.121, P ≤ 0.001) and between age and depression scoring ( r (n = 1678) = −0.232, P ≤ 0.001), shown also on the ANOVA test for age and anxiety ( F = 6.019, P ≤ 0.05), where younger populations had higher anxiety levels, as well as age and depression ( F = 20.326, P ≤ 0.05), where older populations had higher levels of depression. Differences on the level of education resulted in a lower score of anxiety and depression ( F = 3.524, P ≤ 0.05; F = 7.739, P ≤ 0.05, respectively) on respondents with higher education. Those who found themselves jobless from the pandemic scored higher on anxiety and depression ( F = 9.760, P ≤ 0.05; M = 6.21, ds = 4.686 and F = 16.051, P ≤ 0.05; M = 8.18, ds = 5.791, respectively) compared with those who are still working. Significant differences were found on the ANOVA test related to different amounts of time spent daily on the COVID-19 topic for anxiety and depression ( F = 25.736, P ≤ 0.001; F = 5.936, P ≤ 0.003, respectively), with people who spend <1 h scoring higher on depression (M = 7.57, ds = 5.849) and those who spent >3 h scoring higher on anxiety (M = 6.76, ds = 5.60). On the t -test, people on a romantic relationship scored lower levels of depression (t = −4.053, P ≤ 0.0001) compared to single individuals, and females scored higher levels of anxiety ( t = 12.344, P ≤ 0.001) compared to males. Conclusions: Younger participants score higher levels of anxiety and depression. Higher education individuals show lower levels of anx...

Never too late to plan: “Refocus on planning” as an effective way to lower symptoms and difficulties in emotion regulation during the COVID-19 first lockdown.

“…First of all, the reported level of anxiety and depression were similar to those observed in other studies (see, e.g., Asmundson et al, 2020). Furthermore, we found similar results concerning age as other COVID-19 studies, which showed that younger individuals were more affected by the pandemic than older individuals (Elezi et al, 2020;Huang & Zhao, 2020;Moghanibashi-Mansourieh, 2020;Picaza Gorrochategi et al, 2020;Saravanan et al, 2020;Smith et al, 2020). An interesting finding of our study regards the fact that, whereas anxiety levels were retrospectively reported to have increased in men from before to during the pandemic, this is not the case for women, who did not report a perceived significant increase in their anxiety level.…”

COVID-19 behavioral health and quality of life

“…Similarly, our study found indirect pathways to mental health, where younger participants reported prior mental health problems and older participants reported prior physical health problems. In the current study, younger participants also had more indirect stressors associated with the pandemic 16 and reported more COVID-19 experiences. Females and whites reported more anxiety, although this association did not hold in the structural model.…”

“…Early studies from the COVID-19 pandemic identify similar concerns to past pandemics regarding mental health 5 , 13 – 15 . Age appears to be a predictor of mental health problems—younger adults have more difficulty 16 – 19 . However, another study found that persons older than 85 years had worsened mental health, suggesting a potential U-shape distribution 20 .…”

“…Whether it is a social determinant, exposure to SARs, H1N1, and Ebola help understand that pandemics can result in elevated and long lasting mental health symptoms 6,9,12 .Early studies from the COVID-19 pandemic identify similar concerns to past pandemics regarding mental health 5,[13][14][15] . Age appears to be a predictor of mental health problems-younger adults have more difficulty [16][17][18][19] . However, another study found that persons older than 85 years had worsened mental health, suggesting a potential U-shape distribution 20 .…”

A non-systematic, descriptive literature review of observational research on anxiety during the first COVID-19 pandemic phase

“…We included 76 studies: 92.1% (n = 70) were cross-sectional studies [13,14,22,26,[28][29][30]34,41,42,46,47,[53][54][55]57,62,65,[69][70][71]75,76,[79][80][81]83], followed by Latin America (6.5%; n = 5) [31,50,58,60,82], Africa (3.9%; n = 3) [36,44,84], Oceania (1.3%; n = 1) [38], and North America (1.3%; n = 1) [78], while two studies included samples from two or more continents [48,56]. None of the studies included in this review were conducted with face-to-face interviews.…”