Abstract
BackgroundWith uncertainty surrounding the 2019 coronavirus disease pandemic, there is no knowledge of the psychological impact of this pandemic on the general public from Kashmir. We aimed to understand the psychological impact in the form of depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, quality of sleep, and coping during this pandemic.MethodsThis cross-sectional study was conducted using social networking sites. The questionnaire meant for this study was sent as a link to a respondent. Initial part of questionnaire collected the socio-demographic details of the respondents. Depressive and anxiety symptoms were assessed using Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) was used to assess the quality of sleep. There was also an open-ended question to look for coping skills used.ResultsThe majority of our respondents were below 45 years (around 95%) with 54.9% from 18 to 30 years age group. 72.3% were males and 27.7% were females. 58.7% were from rural background. 55.7% were employed, and 32.2% were students. In our respondents, 55% had anxiety symptoms, 55% had depressive symptoms, around 53% had poor quality of sleep, and around 30% of used maladaptive coping skills. Significant depressive symptoms were there in the younger age group, 18–30 years (p = 0.03). Significant depressive symptoms and anxiety symptoms were present in females (p = 0.01 and 0.006, respectively). In urban population, significant anxiety symptoms (p = 0.03) were present. The mean score for anxiety symptoms and depressive symptoms was 8.05 ± 4.53 and 8.07 ± 4.56, respectively. Mean global PSQI score was 6.90 ± 3.82 and was positively correlated with score on depressive symptom scale (p = 0.001) as well as score on anxiety symptom scale (p = 0.001).ConclusionYounger people, females, those living in urban conditions, and those using maladaptive coping skills are likely to have anxiety symptoms and depressive symptoms as well as poor quality of sleep.
Highlights
With uncertainty surrounding the 2019 coronavirus disease pandemic, there is no knowledge of the psychological impact of this pandemic on the general public from Kashmir
In China, the National Health Commission there released a notification regarding the basic principles for emergency psychological interventions and care for mental health in different target groups including the general public who are in need [10]
The influence of geopolitical scenarios in our part of the world can act as a strong confounding factor. Despite these limitations, during the current extraordinary circumstances, it is expected to have a rise in anxiety and depressive symptoms and use of different coping skills, but there is always a risk that the prevalence of people with clinically relevant anxiety and depression will increase
Summary
With uncertainty surrounding the 2019 coronavirus disease pandemic, there is no knowledge of the psychological impact of this pandemic on the general public from Kashmir. During an outbreak of one of influenza, the percentage of respondents who were very worried or fairly worried about contracting the influenza virus fluctuated between 10 and 30% but in the same study, around 60% of respondents accepted the flu vaccine for fear of the contracting virus, either to themselves or to their children [12] During this pandemic, to support mental health and to provide psychosocial support, WHO developed a series of different messages to communicate with different target groups including the general public [13]. In China, the National Health Commission there released a notification regarding the basic principles for emergency psychological interventions and care for mental health in different target groups including the general public who are in need [10] With uncertainty surrounding this pandemic, we hypothesize that there will be a wide range of negative impacts on the psychological health of people at individual and community levels. To explore this gap in research, using a social media-based survey, we tried to understand the impact on psychological health, in the form of depressive and anxiety symptoms, quality of sleep, and use of coping skills among the general public during the initial stages of this pandemic in Kashmir
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