Abstract
Introduction: Coronavirus disease 2019 was first detected in China in December 2019. In Ethiopia, depression, anxiety, and stress levels of chronic disease patients were not known during COVID-19. Thus, this study aimed to assess depression, anxiety, and stress levels of chronic disease patients in government and private hospitals of Dessie town during COVID-19. Methods: Hospital-based cross-sectional study design was used. The Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 was used to measure depression, anxiety, and stress of chronic disease patients during the current pandemic. Both binary and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to identify factors, and a significant association was declared at p-value < 0.05 in multivariate analysis. Results and Discussion: The overall anxiety, depression, and stress level were 19.9%, 21.5%, and 17.7%, respectively. In multivariate analysis, older age, female gender, urban residency, duration of living with chronic diseases, and presence of comorbidities were associated with depression of chronic disease patients during the pandemic at p-value <0.05. Age, female gender, presence of comorbidities, and no social support were associated with anxiety. Urban residency, use of hand sanitizer, those who had respiratory manifestations, and travel history in the last two weeks were significantly associated with stress levels. Conclusion: A significant number of chronic disease patients had depression, anxiety, and stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, governmental and non-governmental organizations, health professionals, media, and hospital administrators should be involved to decrease the depression, anxiety, and stress of chronic disease patients during the pandemic. Moreover, we encourage researchers to conduct comparative longitudinal studies to assess depression, anxiety, and stress levels of chronic disease patients before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Highlights
Coronavirus disease 2019 was first detected in China in December 2019
21.5% of chronic diseases patients had depression during the COVID-19 pandemic
Our study revealed that depression, anxiety, and stress were common in chronic disease patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, which needs interventions by the government, local administrations, health care workers, and researchers as well as non-governmental organizations
Summary
Coronavirus disease 2019 was first detected in China in December 2019. In Ethiopia, depression, anxiety, and stress levels of chronic disease patients were not known during COVID-19. This study aimed to assess depression, anxiety, and stress levels of chronic disease patients in government and private hospitals of Dessie town during COVID-19. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the etiology of COVID-19. This virus was first reported in China in December 2019, and it has been spreading globally. COVID-19 is mainly a respiratory disease that is manifested by cough, fever, dyspnea, fatigue, myalgia, headache, chills, and sore throat. At the time of admission, only 44% of patients infected with the novel coronavirus had a fever, but about 89% would be febrile during hospitalization [2 - 4]
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