An Investigation and Comparison of the Prevalence of Anxiety and Depression among Clinical and administrative staff of Hospital Inpatient Ward for Patients with COVID-19 in Yazd Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences

Abstract

In December 2019, a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection occurred in Wuhan, China, and spread throughout China and abroad, and the World Health Organization officially named the disease caused by this new coronavirus Covid-19. This disease remains still a unique case because it spread quickly around the world and caused a global health emergency in less than a few months. Covid-19 not only causes public health problems, but also has led to many mental illnesses, including anxiety, fear, and depression among hospital staff. The present study was applied in terms of purpose, and the research method was descriptive, analytical, and comparative. Cochran's formula was adopted to calculate a sample size of 287 staff working in the clinical and administrative departments of hospitals affiliated with Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences in Yazd City. The researchers adopted the simple random sampling method to choose the research participants. Data were collected by using a 103-item questionnaire in which 24 items were related to general questions, 28 items to health status, 15 items to attitudes toward Covid-19, 22 items to stressful life events, 16 items to trust in government information, 18 items to personal feelings and finally 10 items were related to feelings of confusion. Spss22 was used to analyze the data. The results indicated no significant relationship between demographic factors (place of residence, age, gender, level of education, marital status, and place of employment) and depression and anxiety among the staff. A significant relationship was discovered between demographic factors such as age and level of education with depression and gender and also between marital status and anxiety in the clinical staff. In conclusion, the level of education and the prevalence of depression was significantly different in administrative and clinical staff. Meanwhile, a significant difference was detected between the place of employment and the prevalence of anxiety among administrative and clinical staff.