Brazilian physiotherapist anxiety and depression during the COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional survey

Abstract

This study investigated the prevalence and the potential risk factors for anxiety and depression among physiotherapists during the pandemic. Physiotherapists answered a web-based questionnaire including 1) sociodemographic, professional and clinical information; 2) psychosocial demands; and 3) two validated questionnaires to measure anxiety and depression. Binary logistic regression identified the risk factors by means of odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). In 417 participants, there was a high prevalence of anxiety (48.2%) and depression (53.0%). The risk factors for anxiety were female sex (OR 2.07; 95%CI 1.01-4.24), worsening in sleep patterns (OR 3.78; 95%CI 1.92-7.44), moderate (OR 2.24; 95%CI 1.00-5.00) and extreme concern about financial issues (OR 3.47; 95%CI 1.57-7.65), and extreme loneliness (OR 3.47; 95%CI 1.71-7.07). The risk factors for depression were female sex (OR 2.16; 95%CI 1.03-4.55), low family income (OR 2.43; 95%CI 1.21-4.89), worsening in sleep patterns (OR 5.97; 95%CI 3.02-11.82), extreme concern about financial issues (OR 2.61; 95%CI 1.15-5.94), and extreme loneliness (OR 4.38; 95%CI 2.00-9.63). This study found a high prevalence of anxiety and depression in the studied population and identified risk factors for both.

Self-perceived stress by women during the COVID-19 pandemic: an online survey with brazilian physiotherapists

“…Sociodemographic and clinical factors were not associated with high levels of perceived stress among these Brazilian female PTs during the pandemic. Some sociodemographic factors included in the current study (like age 1,2,16 , marital status 1,16 , and family income 2 ) were previously associated with stress in health professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic, which differs from our results. However, none of these studies analyzed the association of these variables specifically with high-stress perception levels, defined as scores equal to or above the 80th percentile of the PSS-10 23 .…”

“…Marital status did not predict the high stress perceived levels in this study, which corroborates a study conducted with nurses in Saudi Arabia 32 but diverges from studies conducted with physicians1 and PTs 16 , in which married individuals reported lower levels of perceived stress than non-married ones 16,32 . However, in the current study, participants who reported a high or extreme level of concern about their relationship with their partner were more likely to report a high level of perceived stress.…”

“…rehabilitation after hospital discharge [10][11][12][13][14][15] . However, some publications have assessed the levels of stress among PTs during this pandemic 2,13,16 and to the best of our knowledge, no study was published focusing specifically on female PTs.…”