Attitude, practice, behavior, and mental health impact of COVID-19 on doctors

Abstract

Background: COVID-19, like every other pandemic, has imposed an unprecedented threat to doctors' physical and mental health. Literature in this area is sparse. The present study has been done to explore the knowledge, attitude, and behavior of doctors regarding this pandemic and how it influences their depression, anxiety, and stress level. Materials and Methods: This online survey has been done for 10 days. Data were collected on background characteristics, knowledge, attitude, and behavior of the respondents in a semi-structured pro forma, and psychiatric morbidity was measured by the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale-21. A total of 152 complete responses have been received. The data were assessed using SPSS software. Results: Out of 152 study participants, 34.9% were depressed and 39.5% and 32.9% were having anxiety and stress, respectively. Significant predictors for psychiatric morbidities were experience in health sector, duty hours, use of protective measures, and altruistic coping. Multivariable logistic regression showed most of the factors to be significantly associated with depression, anxiety, and stress level. Discussion: Doctors who were working during COVID pandemic have a high prevalence of psychiatric morbidity. Age and having multiple comorbidities are significant predictive factors. Adequate protective measures should be warranted. Altruistic coping and a sense of greater goal are significant among the doctor community, in this pressing time. The doctors are pushing themselves to the best of their capacity and also protecting their patients' best interest. A large-scale, multicentric study will probably give a larger picture and will guide us for better service planning and delivery.

Work place impact on mental wellbeing of frontline doctors

“…They may be exposed to positive patients (without knowing beforehand) and thus must refer them to a higher medical facility, whereas in other health care facilities like medical colleges and hospitals, frontline doctors deal with already diagnosed COVID patients with full protection like PPEs. A study in North India showed results of 35% of depressive symptoms and 33% of anxiety symptoms in doctors posted in COVID duty, findings that were similar to ours [14]. A study Um DH et al . in South Korea during the MERS outbreak showed a 26% rate of depression, but the sample size at 64 was quite small [10].…”

“…The uncertainty posed by the coronavirus has placed an extra burden on health professionals who may have suffered from anxiety and OCD in the past [13]. A study by conducted by Seshadri Sekar Chatterjee et al in West Bengal (North India) showed 34.9% of the doctors were depressed and 39.5% reported anxiety [14]. Considering the geographical variation, dense population, multi-strata health care structure, and rising COVID cases in South India, we have a reason to speculate that the burden on the frontline doctors is high and that their psychological condition may also be affected during COVID-19 outbreak.…”

Investigating the Psychological Impact of COVID-19 among Healthcare Workers: A Meta-Analysis

“…Twenty-nine studies were of good quality [16][17][18][19][24][25][26][27][28]31,34,39,41,42,44,46,53,54,57,[59][60][61]63,64,66,68,71,79,80] (score range 7-9) and thirty-six studies were of medium quality [6,20,21,23,27,29,30,32,33,[35][36][37][38]43,45,[47][48][49][50][51][52]55,56,…”

Psychological Impact of COVID-19 Duties During Lockdown on Police Personnel and Their Perception About the Behavior of the People: an Exploratory Study from India

“…Although, since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many researchers have evaluated the mental health issues among the HCWs (Chatterjee et al 2020;Lai et al 2020;Ni et al 2020), there is no systemic study involving the police personnel. Keeping all these in mind, and considering the police work to be physically, emotionally, and mentally taxing, taking appropriate steps to mitigate psychological support to police staff is highly essential.…”