Levels and predictors of anxiety, depression, and stress during COVID-19 pandemic among frontline healthcare providers in Gurage zonal public hospitals, Southwest Ethiopia, 2020: A multicenter cross-sectional study

Abstract

Introduction The provision of quality health care during the COVID-19 pandemic depends largely on the health of health care providers. However, healthcare providers as the frontline caregivers dealing with infected patients, are more vulnerable to mental health problems. Despite this fact, there is scarce information regarding the mental health impact of COVID-19 among frontline health care providers in South-West Ethiopia. Objective This study aimed to determine the levels and predictors of anxiety, depression, and stress during the COVID-19 pandemic among frontline healthcare providers in Gurage zonal public hospitals, Southwest Ethiopia, 2020. Methods An institutional-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 322 health care providers from November 10–25, 2020 in Gurage zonal health institutions. A simple random sampling technique was used to select the study participants. A pretested self -administered structured questionnaire was used as a data collection technique. The data were entered into the Epi-data version 3.01 and exported to SPSS version 25.0 for analysis. Both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics (chi-square tests) were presented Bivariable and Multivariable logistic regression analyses were made to identify variables having a significant association with the dependent variables. Results The results of this study had shown that the overall prevalence of anxiety, depression and stress among health care providers during the COVID-19 pandemic was 36%, [95% CI = (30.7%- 41.3%)], 25.8% [95% CI = (21.1%- 30.4%)] and 31.4% [95% CI = (26.4%- 36.0%)] respectively. Age, Adjusted Odds Ratio [AOR = 7.9], Educational status, [AOR = 3.2], low monthly income [AOR = 1.87], and presence of infected family members [AOR = 3.3] were statistically associated with anxiety. Besides this, gender, [AOR = 1.9], masters [AOR = 10.8], and degree holder [AOR = 2.2], living with spouse [AOR = 5.8], and family [AOR = 3.9], being pharmacists [AOR = 4.5], and physician [AOR = (0.19)], were found to be statistically significant predictors of depression among health care providers. Our study finding also showed that working at general [AOR = 4.8], and referral hospitals [AOR = 3.2], and low monthly income [AOR = 2.3] were found to be statistically significant predictors of stress among health care providers. Conclusion Based on our finding significant numbers of healthcare providers were suffered from anxiety, depression, and stress during the COVID-19 outbreak. So, the Government and other stakeholders should be involved and closely work and monitor the mental wellbeing of health care providers.

Nurses’ stress, anxiety, depression, and burnout in the workplace: A correlational study

“…Nurses with chronic medical illness, children to take care of at home, and rotational shifts contributed to increasing stress experiences (Dechasa et al, 2021;Baye et al, 2020). In the face of the current pandemic, depressive symptoms were high among nurses' secondary to the mental effects and concerns about safety (GebreEyesus et al, 2021;Yadeta et al, 2021). The findings of the current study had described the context of stress, anxiety, depression, and burnout in the workplace that serve to provide recommendations for needed action.…”

Prevalence and predictors of depression, anxiety and stress among frontline healthcare workers at COVID-19 isolation sites in Gaborone, Botswana

“…A cross sectional study in Ethiopia showed similar results to our study with a prevalence of 20.2%, 21.9% and 15.5% for depression, anxiety and stress respectively [ 15 ]. Conversely, another study in Ethiopia had a slightly higher prevalence of stress of 31.4% while the prevalence of depression and anxiety were 25.8% and 36% respectively [ 16 ]. The incongruity of the results may be due to the use of different scales and different cut-off scores to measure depression, anxiety and stress.…”

“…Participants were categorized into normal, mild, moderate, severe and extremely severe according to the cut-off in the respective subscales. The depression subscale is made up of questions 3,5,10,13,16,17,21,24,26,31,34,37,38 and 42. This scale was divided into normal (0-9), mild depression (10-13), moderate depression (14-20), severe depression (21-27) and extremely severe depression (>28).…”

“…The anxiety subscale is made of questions 2,4,7,9,15,19,20,23,25,28,30,36,40 and 41. The scale was divided into normal (0-7), mild anxiety (8-9), moderate anxiety (10)(11)(12)(13)(14), severe anxiety (15)(16)(17)(18)(19) and extremely severe anxiety (>20). The rest of the questions make up the stress subscale.…”

“…The rest of the questions make up the stress subscale. The scale was divided into normal (0-14), mild stress (15)(16)(17)(18), moderate stress (19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25), Severe stress (26-33) and extremely severe stress (>34).…”