Evaluation of Symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in COVID-19 First Line Staff in Iran

Abstract

The outbreak of the Corona pandemic at the end of 2019 has led to an increase in workload among first-line staff at Corona patient care centers. The aim of this study was to evaluate the symptoms of PTSD in corona first line staff and other staff of Iranian hospitals. This cross-sectional study was conducted in 2020 in COVID-19 hospitals and general hospitals. The sample consisted of 90 general hospital staff and 92 COVID-19 hospitals who were selected by convenience sampling. The PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5) was also research tool. One-way analysis of variance through SPSS 19 software was used to analyze the data. The result shows that COVID-19 front-line staff had higher levels of PTSD than other staff (p<0.001). Also, female staff experience more PTSD symptoms than male staff at COVIDe19 first line hospital(p=0.025). According to the result, it can be said that among the first line staff of Corona virus in Iran, the rate of PTSD symptoms is higher than other staff. Also, among these people, women have more symptoms. The reason for this increase in first-line staff can be considered the exposure to quarantine conditions, exposure to death and severe symptoms of the virus, and ambiguity of treatment and prognosis of the disease. Also, female staff have more symptoms than male staff, which indicates the need to study and provide more psychological services to this group.