The mental health of health care workers in Oman during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

<jats:sec><jats:title>Background:</jats:title><jats:p> COVID-19 disease is one of the most destructive events that humanity has witnessed in the 21st century. It has impacted all aspects of life and all segments of populations, including already vulnerable health care providers. </jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Aims:</jats:title><jats:p> This study sought to detect the prevalence of mental health issues in sample of physicians and nurses working in several health facilities in Oman. </jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Method:</jats:title><jats:p> We gauged the mental health conditions of 509 physicians (38.1%) and nurses (61.9 %) using the Perceived Stress Scale, Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale and World Health Organization Well-Being Index. </jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Results:</jats:title><jats:p> The study revealed a high prevalence of stress, anxiety and poor psychological well-being, especially among females, young health care workers and those who interacted with known or suspected COVID-19 patients. </jats:p></jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title>Conclusion:</jats:title><jats:p> The outcomes of this study support the handful of studies published during this global health crisis that have found that the mental health of health care workers has been harshly affected and predicted that it will continue, to various degrees, to be affected in the foreseeable future. The results of this study highlight the urgency of providing administrative and psychological support as well as current and accurate information on COVID-19 to health care workers. </jats:p></jats:sec>

Impact of viral epidemic outbreaks on mental health of healthcare workers: a rapid systematic review and meta-analysis

“… Zhu et al 2020 ), stress (Z. Zhu et al 2020 , Badahdah et al 2020 , Elbay et al 2020 ), anxiety ( Dosil Santamaria et al 2020 , Lijun Kang et al 2020, Kurt et al 2020 , Lai et al 2020 , Badahdah et al 2020 , Corbett et al 2020 , Elbay et al 2020 , Yildirim et al 2020 ) and burnout ( Tolomiczenko et al 2005 ), whereas no consistent associations were found for PTSD.…”

Stress and anxiety among nurses working in tertiary care hospitals in Nepal during COVID- 19 pandemic

“…28,29 Further, study done by Badahdah and colleague revealed that 74.1% of health care workers experienced minimal to mild anxiety (35.5% and 38.7%, respectively) whereas, rest (25.9%) reported moderate to severe anxiety (17.7% and 8.3%, respectively). 30 The variations in findings might be due to use of different measurement scales and cut-off points adopted by the studies. Furthermore, the variations in degree of stress and anxiety score might be due to the fact that our country still is in the early stage of corona outbreak.…”

The Combined Effect of Perceived COVID-19 Infection Risk at Work and Identification with Work Community on Psychosocial Wellbeing among Finnish Social Sector and Health Care Workers

“…Although psychological symptoms have been found to be particularly high among those working on the frontline during the pandemic [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ], non-frontline heath care workers have also reported such symptoms [ 9 ]. Moreover, these symptoms have been more severe among females and younger workers [ 4 , 10 , 11 ], as well as for those with prior mental health problems [ 12 , 13 ]. In addition to these cases, social sector workers, who have seldom been acknowledged in the recent COVID-19 literature, have also faced risk of infection in their work [ 14 ].…”