Mental Health during the COVID-19 Crisis in Africa: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Jiyao Chen,Xue Wan,Richard Z Chen,Stephen X Zhang,Bryan Z Chen,Jin Yin,Saylor Miller,Wen Xu,Andrew Yilong Delios,Nusrat Farah,Rebecca Kechen Dong,Wenping Ye

doi:10.3390/ijerph182010604

Abstract

We aim to provide a systematic review and meta-analysis of the prevalence rates of mental health symptoms among major African populations during the COVID-19 pandemic. We include articles from PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, PsycINFO, and medRxiv between 1 February 2020 and 6 February 2021, and pooled data using random-effects meta-analyses. We identify 28 studies and 32 independent samples from 12 African countries with a total of 15,071 participants. The pooled prevalence of anxiety was 37% in 27 studies, of depression was 45% in 24 studies, and of insomnia was 28% in 9 studies. The pooled prevalence rates of anxiety, depression, and insomnia in North Africa (44%, 55%, and 31%, respectively) are higher than those in Sub-Saharan Africa (31%, 30%, and 24%, respectively). We find (a) a scarcity of studies in several African countries with a high number of COVID-19 cases; (b) high heterogeneity among the studies; (c) the extent and pattern of prevalence of mental health symptoms in Africa is high and differs from elsewhere—more African adults suffer from depression rather than anxiety and insomnia during COVID 19 compared to adult populations in other countries/regions. Hence, our findings carry crucial implications and impact future research to enable evidence-based medicine in Africa.

Highlights

This study aims to address this gap by providing a systematic review to estimate the pooled prevalence of anxiety, depression, and insomnia in Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic
We only focus on studies that collected data in African countries, and we call for future meta-analyses in other countries or regions, as the COVID-19 pandemic is unfolding around the globe
This paper presents, to the best of our knowledge, the first systematic review and meta-analysis of the prevalence of mental health symptoms during the COVID-19 crisis in Africa

Summary

Introduction

Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).Africa, a huge continent that is home to 1.37 billion people, is particularly vulnerable to the highly contagious COVID-19 disease due to its unique and severe limitations [1,2].Africa has limited medical facilities and resources [3], such as the lack of advanced healthcare facilities [4] and intensive care units, understaffed and overcrowded hospitals, crippling healthcare coordination and transportation, limited access to sanitary items and clean water [5], inefficient primary healthcare infrastructure [6], limited vaccinology training programs [7], and limited vaccine penetration in its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2021, 18, 10604. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182010604 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph

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