The Relationship between Fear of Infection and Insomnia among Dentists from Oradea Metropolitan Area during the Outbreak of Sars-CoV-2 Pandemic

Abstract

Various studies have shown the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on mental health, identifying that people with a strong fear of getting infected are more prone to become stressed, depressed, anxious and to experience sleeping disturbance. The present study focuses on the impact of fear of COVID-19 and its relationship with insomnia among dentists. 83 dentists from public and private clinics were included in the research. A questionnaire was especially constructed for this study, consisting of three parts: the first part gathered socio-demographic and medical data, and a succession of self-rated items collected opinions about lockdown and preventive behaviors; the second part evaluated the level of fear of infection with Coronavirus-19 using the Fear of Covid 19 Scale; the third part investigated the presence of insomnia using the Athens Insomnia Scale. Collected data were processed using SPSS (v. 25). The total scores for fear of COVID 19 and insomnia were assessed. A strong positive correlation was identified between the total score of AIS and the total score of FCV-19S. The fear of COVID-19 had a significant positive correlation with the practice of several preventive behaviors. Dentists with chronic diseases were found to be more prone to suffer from insomnia than healthy dentists. Significant differences between women and men in terms of night symptoms were discussed. The findings are useful for dentists and policy makers to evaluate the impact of fear of infection on mental health status.

Factors associated with fear of COVID‐19 among people living with HIV/AIDS in Suphanburi province, Thailand

“…There is a positive significant association between preventive practice regarding COVID‐19 and fear of COVID‐19 among our participants. This finding concurs with a study done in Romania which reported that the practice of preventive behaviors regarding COVID‐19 had a significant positive association with fear of COVID‐19 (Iorga et al, 2021). The explanation might be that fear of COVID‐19 may motivate people to engage in behaviors that prevent them from infection.…”

Habituating to pandemic anxiety: Temporal trends of COVID-19 anxiety over sixteen months of COVID-19

“…The second, habituation, denotes a process in which in which a perpetual exposure to a risk tends to decrease the anxiety of people towards the risk ( Foa and Kozak, 1986 ; Guazzini et al, 2022 ). Regarding habituation, our data highlight that since pandemic anxiety reduce throughout time, individuals might need additional motivational strategies to continuously engage in preventive behaviors ( Iorga et al, 2021 ; Scrima et al, 2022 ). On the other hand, considering that pandemic anxiety is associated with mental suffering ( Karadem et al, 2021 ), assessing intolerance of uncertainty, the fear about others being infected by COVID-19, and the fear of having the mental health impacted by COVID-19 may be crucial for treating mental health suffering in the pandemic scenario.…”

“…The COVID-19 anxiety is one of the cognitive and emotional process responsible for this impact, associated with psychological distress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms ( Karadem et al, 2021 ). On the other hand, COVID-19 anxiety is associated with mitigation behaviors and intention to get vaccinated ( Iorga et al, 2021 ; Scrima et al, 2022 ). Understanding how the pandemic anxiety varies along the pandemic situation could contribute to understanding the development of coping strategies in face of a new stressor.…”

Predictors of black fungus fear during the COVID-19 pandemic among the Bangladeshi health workers: a cross-sectional study

“…Alongside, numerous predictors like knowledge of mucormycosis, age, gender, profession, and FNF died of COVID-19 were found significantly associated with mucormycosis fear. Albeit, the fear of infectious diseases during the outbreak has been recorded previously in many studies in various aspects [37]–[40].…”