DEPRESSION , ANXIETY AND STRESS LEVEL DUE TO COVID-19 PANDEMIC IN PATHOLOGISTS WORKING IN TERTIARY HEALTH CARE CENTRES OF PAKISTAN
Main Article Content
Abstract
Objectives: To determine the level of depression , anxiety and stresss in pathologists due to Covid -19 pandemic .
Materials and methods: It was a Cross sectional Analytical Multicenter Questionnaire based study conducted from April 2020 to June 2020 by including Pathologists working in Khyber Teaching Hospital and Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences , Islamabad. Informed written consent was obtained and DASS-21 Questionnaire was administred .Data was analysed by SPSS. Levels of depression, anxiety and stress were determined and analysed by multiple regression to predict depression anxiety and stress levels from demographics.
Results: Mean age of the study sample was 25-63 (37±8.75).There were 13(22.4%) males and 45(77.6%) females. Overall DAS score, mean depression , anxiety and stress score were 31.5±22, 8.7±9.1, 7.4±7.1 and 15.3±9 respectively. Females had higher overall DAS score (U=156.5, p=.011), depression score (U=178.5, p=.032) and anxiety score (U=168.5, p=.029) as compared to males. Anxiety scores were highest in pathologists working in microbiology section and lowest in those of chemical pathology section (?2=8.13,p=.043). Multiple regression analysis showed that female gender was significantly associated with a higher overall DAS sore (?=13.69 , p=.047) and stress score (?=6.10 , p=.031) as compared to male gender.
Conclusion: Pathologists working in Covid-19 pandemic have a high level of mental distress and females have higher level of psychological distress as compared to males. Implementation of mental support programmes for health care workers during pandemic situations is required to provide psychological support to health care workers.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
All articles published in the Journal of Medical Sciences (JMS) are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0). Under the CC BY 4.0 license, author(s) retain the ownership of the copyright publishing rights without restrictions for their content, and allow others to copy, use, print, share, modify, and distribute the content of the article even for commercial purposes as long as the original authors and the journal are properly cited. No permission is required from the author/s or the publishers for this purpose. Appropriate attribution can be provided by simply citing the original article. The corresponding author has the right to grant on behalf of all authors, a worldwide license to JMS and its licensees in all forms, formats, and media (whether known now or created in the future), The corresponding author must certify and warrant the authorship and proprietorship and should declare that he/she has not granted or assigned any of the article’s rights to any other person or body.
The corresponding author must compensate the journal for any costs, expenses, or damages that the JMS may incur as a result of any breach of these warranties including any intentional or unintentional errors, omissions, copyright issues, or plagiarism. The editorial office must be notified upon submission if an article contains materials like text, pictures, tables, or graphs from other copyrighted sources. The JMS reserves the right to remove any images, figures, tables, or other content, from any article, whether before or after publication, if concerns are raised about copyright, license, or permissions and the authors are unable to provide documentation confirming that appropriate permissions were obtained for publication of the content in question.