Mental Health of Medical Workers During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Russia: Results of a Cross-Sectional Study

  1. E.V. Bachilo
  2. J.B. Barylnik
  3. A.A. Shuldyakov
  4. A.A. Efremov
  5. D.E. Novikov

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Abstract

This is the first study in Russia regarding the mental health of medical workers during a pandemic. In this survey, the study of medical workers during pandemic COVID-19 in Russia reported high rates of symptoms of depression and anxiety. There is a higher risk of developing symptoms of anxiety and depression among young employees working directly in high-risk areas of the infection. Protecting medical workers is an important component of public health measures for addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. Special measures to improve the mental health of medical workers should be based on their needs. Special attention needs to be paid to young medical workers working in areas with a high risk of infection.

Highlights

  • medical workers are at high risk of developing mental disorders during a pandemic COVID-19;

  • the overall prevalence of GAD (5 or more points on the GTD-7 scale) and depressive symptoms (5 or more points on the PHQ-9 scale) among medical workers in Russia during the pandemic period was 48.77% and 57.63% respectively;

  • there is a higher risk of developing symptoms of anxiety and depression among young employees working directly in high-risk areas of the infection;

  • the provision of personal protective equipment (69.2%), the optimization of the work and rest regime during the shift (58%), the support of management (52.7%) and relatives (51.1%) are the main areas that reduce the psycho-emotional stress of medical workers during a pandemic.

Article activity feed

  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.07.27.20162610: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: All respondents were able to familiarize themselves with informed consent prior to the start of the survey and could finish answering questions at any time.
    IRB: In total, the survey involved 812 respondents from 77 regions of Russia. 2.3 Ethical aspects: The study was conducted in accordance with the Helsinki Declaration and was approved by the ethics committee of the Scientific and Educational Center for Psychotherapy and Clinical Psychology.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Analysis and visualization of the obtained data were carried out using the statistical computing environment R 3.6.3 (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria), the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 24.0, Microsoft Excel.
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)
    Microsoft Excel
    suggested: (Microsoft Excel, RRID:SCR_016137)

    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.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.07.27.20162610: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementAll respondents were able to familiarize themselves with informed consent prior to the start of the survey and could finish answering questions at any time.Randomizationnot detected.Blindingnot detected.Power Analysisnot detected.Sex as a biological variableDemographic and social data Basic demographic data include occupation (doctor, nurse, technical nurses, non-medical workers who work in the healthcare system), gender (male or female), age (20-25; 26-29; 30-39; 40-49; 50-59; 60 and older), education (incomplete secondary, secondary, college degree, incomplete higher, BA, MA, higher (specialty), PhD, MD); marital status (single / unmarried, in a civil marriage, unmarried, divorced, widow / widower, in a relationship); whether there are children (yes, no); specialty. 2.2.2.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Analysis and visualization of the obtained data were carried out using the statistical computing environment R 3.6.3 (R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria), the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 24.0, Microsoft Excel. 3. Results 3.1.
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, SCR_002865)
          <div style="margin-bottom:8px">
        <div><b>Microsoft Excel</b></div>
        <div>suggested: (Microsoft Excel, <a href="https://scicrunch.org/resources/Any/search?q=SCR_016137">SCR_016137</a>)</div>
      </div>
    </td></tr><tr><td style="min-width:100px;vertical-align:top;border-bottom:1px solid lightgray">Association of influence factors with anxiety and depressive symptoms in medical workers during COVID-19 outbreak The associations of potential influence factors with GAD and depressive symptoms in medical workers during COVID-19 outbreak were presented in Table 6.</td><td style="min-width:100px;border-bottom:1px solid lightgray">
      <div style="margin-bottom:8px">
        <div><b>GAD</b></div>
        <div>suggested: None</div>
      </div>
    </td></tr></table>

    Data from additional tools added to each annotation on a weekly basis.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore is not a substitute for expert review. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers) in the manuscript, and detects sentences that appear to be missing RRIDs. SciScore also checks to make sure that rigor criteria are addressed by authors. It does this by detecting sentences that discuss criteria such as blinding or power analysis. SciScore does not guarantee that the rigor criteria that it detects are appropriate for the particular study. Instead it assists authors, editors, and reviewers by drawing attention to sections of the manuscript that contain or should contain various rigor criteria and key resources. For details on the results shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.07.27.20162610v1 on medRxiv