Mental wellbeing in the Bangladeshi healthy population during nationwide lockdown over COVID-19: an online cross-sectional survey

  1. Ahmed Hossain
  2. Mohammad Ali
  3. Hasinur Rahaman Khan
  4. Gias Ahsan

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Abstract

Background: We aim to profile and contextualize the level of positive mental health among the healthy population during the beginning of nationwide lockdown over COVID-19 in Bangladesh. Design and setting: An online sample of 1404 healthy individuals was collected through the authors' networks with residents and popular media in Bangladesh. The survey was conducted between March 27, 2020, and April 7, 2020, following the Bangladesh government's lockdown announcement. Method: A questionnaire comprising the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS) and sociodemographic information was posted to an online survey. Results: The mean wellbeing value was 38.4 (standard deviation, 11.2), indicating a lower mental health level exist in adults. Also, the mean wellbeing score for males was 39.0 (10.8) units compared to females with scores 37.0 (11.2), and the highest scores for government workers was 41.2 (11.8). Unemployment (35.6) or business employees (35.5) have a lower level of mental health. In the lockout days, the elderly population of age 50 years and above had high day-to-day variation of wellbeing scores. After confounding adjustment in multivariable linear regression models, there found a better wellbeing scores for males (estimate=1.79, 95% CI=0.5, 3.1), and government-workers (estimate=5.86, 95% CI=2.2, 9.5). Moreover, the never-married female had significantly higher well-being score compared to married women (estimate=3.31, 95% CI=1.0, 5.7). Conclusion: The COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with low mental wellbeing that indicates depression in our study. Suggestions for improvement will be implemented to promote the mental health to women, unemployed and business communities. Older people 50 years of age and over reported a greater day-to-day variation in their mental health. The married women with their decreased mental wellbeing should be given special consideration. The research will help let clinicians and policymakers decide where the measures can be implemented to improve their mental health during and after this pandemic.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.14.20102210: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No funding statement was detected.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.05.14.20102210v1 on medRxiv