IMPACT OF COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON THE QUALITY OF LIFE OF MEDICALUNDERGRADUATES AND THE PREVALENCE OF ANXIETY DISORDER AMONG THEM

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The world is facing a public health emergency situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic since January 2020. Psychological wellbeing among individuals worldwide has been negatively affected by the pandemic. The Quality of life is a broad concept to assess and evaluate the person's physical health, psychological state, social relationships and personal beliefs. The present study aimed to assess the Quality of life as well as anxiety disorder and its associations with COVID-19 preventive practice measures, daily activities in home quarantine amongst the backbone of our society, that is the medical undergraduate students. METHODS: An online-based cross-sectional survey was carried out on the medical undergraduates from a medical college in North India. Students self-reported their QoL using the World Health Organization Quality of Life-BREF (WHOQOL-BREF) and the Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD-7) tools. The survey also included socio-demographics and COVID-19-related questions. RESULTS: Anxiety was prevalent among medical students. 32% of the medical undergraduate students were experiencing severe anxiety, 51% moderate anxiety, and 11% mild anxiety. On the other hand, 13.9% participants reported with very poor quality of life whereas 51% mentioned neither very good nor very bad quality of life. CONCLUSIONS: It was found that during the current pandemic crisis medical students were weaker in the psychological domain of Quality of Life. It is recommended that measures To ght against the pandemic, mental as well as physical health issues need to be taken into consideration. need be taken not only to alleviate students' stress and anxiety, but also improve the quality of life which might otherwise have deleterious effects on student's overall performance.