Abstract
Objective: The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), declared as a major public health emergency, has had profound effects on public mental health especially emotional status. Due to professional requirements, medical staff are at a higher risk of infection, which might induce stronger negative emotions. This study aims to reveal the emotional status of Chinese frontline medical staff in the early epidemic period to better maintain their mental health, and provide adequate psychological support for them.Methods: A national online survey was carried out in China at the early stage of the COVID-19 epidemic. In total, 3025 Chinese frontline medical staff took part in this investigation which utilized a general information questionnaire, the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), and the Berkeley Expressivity Questionnaire (BEQ).Results: At the early stage of COVID-19, anxiety was the most common negative emotion of Chinese medical staff, followed by sadness, fear, and anger, mainly at a mild degree, which declined gradually over time. Nurses had the highest level of negative emotions compared with doctors and other healthcare workers. Women experienced more fear than men, younger and unmarried medical staff had more anxiety and fear compared with elders and married ones. Risk perception and emotional expressivity increased negative emotions, cognitive reappraisal reduced negative emotions, while negative emotions led to more avoidant behavior and more physical health disturbances, in which negative emotions mediated the effect of risk perception on avoidant behavior tendency in the model test.Conclusion: Chinese frontline medical staff experienced a mild level of negative emotions at the early stage of COVID-19, which decreased gradually over time. The findings suggest that during the epidemic, nurses' mental health should be extensively attended to, as well as women, younger, and unmarried medical staff. To better ensure their mental health, reducing risk perception and improving cognitive reappraisal might be important, which are potentially valuable to form targeted psychological interventions and emotional guidance under crisis in the future.
Highlights
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), similar to SARS in 2003, has been declared as a major public health emergency [1], and has had a profound influence on personal mental health [2, 3]
We found that Chinese frontline medical staff experienced a mild level of negative emotions in the early period of COVID-19, the trend of which decreased gradually over time
Risk perception and emotional expressivity increased negative emotions, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression reduced negative emotion, while negative emotions led to more avoidant behavior and more physical health disturbances, in which negative emotions mediated the effect of risk perception on avoidant behavior tendency and physical health disturbance of Chinese frontline medical staff
Summary
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), similar to SARS in 2003, has been declared as a major public health emergency [1], and has had a profound influence on personal mental health [2, 3]. Millions of medical staff worked on the frontline to fight against the disease, making them face a high risk of infection [5, 6] and huge mental pressure [7, 8]. Thousands of Chinese medical personnel combated with COVID-19 on the frontline, of whom over 3,000 medical staff were infected with the virus as of February 20, 2020 [8]. The COVID-19 epidemic can be regarded as a crisis event for the general population especially for those frontline medical staff. According to Myer and Conte’s [9] triage assessment system (TAS) for crisis intervention, reactions to crisis events are divided into three domains: affective or emotional, behavioral, and cognitive. The TAS model is a valuable tool in the assessment of individual reactions in crisis and a guide in the identification of the complex interaction among the three domains [9]
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