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Impact of the COVID-19 virus and confinement on the mental health of the tunisian population: Anxiety and depression

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

N. Regaieg ,
M. Elleuch ,
S. Hentati  and
J. Masmoudi
N. Regaieg*
Affiliation:
Psychiatry “a” Department, Hedi Chaker UHC, Sfax, Tunisia, Sfax, Tunisia
M. Elleuch
Affiliation:
Psychiatry “a” Department, Hedi Chaker University Hospital, Sfax, Tunisia
S. Hentati
Affiliation:
Psychiatry “a” Department, Hedi Chaker University Hospital, Sfax, Tunisia
J. Masmoudi
Affiliation:
Psychiatrie “a” Department, Hedi Chaker Hospital University -Sfax - Tunisia, sfax, Tunisia
*
*Corresponding author.

Abstract

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Introduction

The 2019 Coronavirus disease epidemic is a public health emergency of international concern and poses a challenge to psychological resilience.

Objectives

To study the psychological repercussions in terms of anxiety and depression of the Coronavirus pandemic on the Tunisian population.

Methods

This was a cross-sectional, descriptive and analytical study. We used an online questionnaire on Facebook, on June 2020. The heteroquestionnaire included epidemiological data and two scales: the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI Form Y-1) to evaluate the anxiety level at the time of the study, and the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ 9) to detect a characterized depressive episode.

Results

We included 121 participants. They had an average age of 36.52 years with a sex ratio (M/F) of 0.41. The mean STAI score was 43.12 while the PHQ score was 7.46, indicating that 30.8% of the participants suffered from depression. Both scores were correlated to female sex (p=0.01 for STAI and p=0.02 for PHQ), a history of anxiety (p<0.001) and depressive disorders (p<0.001) and to poor sleep quality (p<0.001). The STAI score was also associated with a family history of high blood pressure (p=0.004), while the PHQ score was correlated to a family history of diabetes (p=0.02), a widowed or divorced marital status (p<0.001) and to a single lifestyle (p=0.03). Furthermore, the two scores (STAI-Y and PHQ 9) were also associated (p<0.001; r=0.67).

Conclusions

The psychological impact of Coronavirus epidemic seems not negligible requiring psychological interventions to improve the mental health of vulnerable groups.

Keywords

COVID-19AnxietyDepressionmental health
Type
Abstract
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 64 , Special Issue S1: Abstracts of the 29th European Congress of Psychiatry , April 2021 , pp. S275
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Psychiatric Association
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