Abstract
BackgroundStress, anxiety, and depression are some of the most important research and practice challenges for psychologists, psychiatrists, and behavioral scientists. Due to the importance of issue and the lack of general statistics on these disorders among the Hospital staff treating the COVID-19 patients, this study aims to systematically review and determine the prevalence of stress, anxiety and depression within front-line healthcare workers caring for COVID-19 patients.MethodsIn this research work, the systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression approaches are used to approximate the prevalence of stress, anxiety and depression within front-line healthcare workers caring for COVID-19 patients. The keywords of prevalence, anxiety, stress, depression, psychopathy, mental illness, mental disorder, doctor, physician, nurse, hospital staff, 2019-nCoV, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2 and Coronaviruses were used for searching the SID, MagIran, IranMedex, IranDoc, ScienceDirect, Embase, Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science (ISI) and Google Scholar databases. The search process was conducted in December 2019 to June 2020. In order to amalgamate and analyze the reported results within the collected studies, the random effects model is used. The heterogeneity of the studies is assessed using the I2 index. Lastly, the data analysis is performed within the Comprehensive Meta-Analysis software.ResultsOf the 29 studies with a total sample size of 22,380, 21 papers have reported the prevalence of depression, 23 have reported the prevalence of anxiety, and 9 studies have reported the prevalence of stress. The prevalence of depression is 24.3% (18% CI 18.2–31.6%), the prevalence of anxiety is 25.8% (95% CI 20.5–31.9%), and the prevalence of stress is 45% (95% CI 24.3–67.5%) among the hospitals’ Hospital staff caring for the COVID-19 patients. According to the results of meta-regression analysis, with increasing the sample size, the prevalence of depression and anxiety decreased, and this was statistically significant (P < 0.05), however, the prevalence of stress increased with increasing the sample size, yet this was not statistically significant (P = 0.829).ConclusionThe results of this study clearly demonstrate that the prevalence of stress, anxiety and depression within front-line healthcare workers caring for COVID-19 patients is high. Therefore, the health policy-makers should take measures to control and prevent mental disorders in the Hospital staff.
Highlights
Stress, anxiety, and depression are some of the most important research and practice challenges for psychologists, psychiatrists, and behavioral scientists
Our findings show that the prevalence of depression is 24.3%, the prevalence of anxiety is 25.8%, and the prevalence of stress is 45% in the hospital Hospital staff caring for the COVID-19 patients
Subgroup analysis based on the type of job of the hospital’s Hospital staff Considering the results presented in Table 2, in Hospital staff other than physicians and nurses, the prevalence of it is reported that the prevalence of depression in physicians is much higher than nurses and Hospital staff, and the prevalence of anxiety in Hospital staff is much higher than other groups studied
Summary
Anxiety, and depression are some of the most important research and practice challenges for psychologists, psychiatrists, and behavioral scientists. Due to the importance of issue and the lack of general statistics on these disorders among the Hospital staff treating the COVID-19 patients, this study aims to systematically review and determine the prevalence of stress, anxiety and depression within front-line healthcare workers caring for COVID19 patients. On 31st December 2019, China reported an acute pneumonia outbreak that had emerged from Wuhan. In a short span of time, the disease caused by the new coronavirus (COVID-19) spread from China to other countries, and caused several health, socio-economic and political challenges globally [1, 2]. On 30th January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the 2019 New Coronavirus as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). The outbreak of the disease has put a lot of psychological pressure on different communities and keyworkers, especially Hospital staff who are in a direct contact with the patients [5]
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