Psychological Impairment and Coping Strategies During the COVID-19 Pandemic Among Students in Pakistan: A Cross-Sectional Analysis

Abstract

High levels of stress are expected when crises affect people’s lives. Therefore, this web-based, cross-sectional study was conducted among university students from Pakistan to investigate the psychological impairment and coping strategies during COVID-19 pandemic. Google forms were used to disseminate the online questionnaire to assess anxiety (Generalized Anxiety disorder-7), depression (Patient Health Questionnaire-9) and the coping strategies (Brief-COPE). A total of 1134 responses (age 21.7±3.5 years) were included. The frequency of students having moderate-severe anxiety and depression (score ≥ 10) were ≍ 34% and 45%, respectively. The respondents’ aged ≥ 31 years had significantly lower depression score than those ≤ 20 years (p = 0.047). Males had significantly less anxiety (6.62 ± 5.70 vs 7.84 ± 5.60, p = 0.001) and depression (8.73 ± 6.84 vs 9.71 ± 7.06, p = 0.031) scores. Those having family member, friend or acquaintances infected with disease had significantly higher anxiety score (8.89 ± 5.74 vs 7.09 ± 5.56, p < 0.001). Regarding coping strategies, majority of respondents were found to have adopted religious/spiritual coping (6.45 ± 1.68) followed by acceptance (5.58 ± 1.65), self-distraction (4.97 ± 1.61) and active coping (4.81 ± 1.57). In conclusion, COVID-19 cause significant impairment on mental health of the students. The most frequent coping strategy adopted by students were religious/spiritual and acceptance coping. During epidemics mental health of students should not be neglected.

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