Journal of Depression and Anxiety
Open Access

Abstract

Feeling the Early Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic: Mental Health of Nurses in India

Jithin Thomas Parel*, Mohit Varshney, Mini George, Ruparna Khurana, Linsu Thomas, Deepika C Khakha

Background: Nurses are front-line health care warriors who deliver comprehensive and holistic patient care could have immense amount of distress due to this outbreak. The current study has undertaken to investigate the level of depression, stress and anxiety among nurses. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey conducted among 1131 nurses across Indian subcontinent through snowball sampling technique using depression, anxiety and stress scale DASS-21.Institutional ethical clearance and informed consent was obtained. Binary logistic regression analysis was performed to identify the predictors of depression, stress and anxiety. Results: The survey was completed from 26th March 2020 to 8th April 2020 after the declaration of country-wide lockdown. A total of 1305 respondents completed the survey; among which 1131 were included in the final analysis. Overall a significant proportion of nurses had Depression (41.3%), anxiety (49.1%) and stress (29.5%) based on the responses. The odds of having depression, anxiety and stress were lower in nurses who have not been posted for care of confirmed or suspected COVID-19 cases. Similarly, female nurses had higher odds of depression (OR 4.361; p=0.02) and anxiety (OR 5.498; p=0.01) as compared to males. Discussion: The magnitude of psychological impact among the nurses, which in most cases are the part of frontline teams, deserves attention while policy makers plan comprehensive intervention to tackle the pandemic. Our study demonstrated that a significant proportion of them have psychological issues during this crisis period. Hence addressing the factors impacting their mental health can go a long way in sustaining the much needed healthcare workforce.

Published Date: 2020-12-24; Received Date: 2020-10-16