A systematic review and meta‐analysis of the mental health symptoms during the Covid‐19 pandemic in S outheast A sia
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Abstract
The Covid‐19 pandemic has had a substantial impact on the mental health of the general public and high‐risk groups worldwide. Due to its proximity and close links to China, Southeast Asia was one of the first regions to be affected by the outbreak. The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the prevalence of anxiety, depression and insomnia in the general adult population and healthcare workers (HCWs) in Southeast Asia during the course of the first year of the pandemic.
Methods
Several literature databases were systemically searched for articles published up to February 2021 and two reviewers independently evaluated all relevant studies using pre‐determined criteria. The prevalence rates of mental health symptoms were calculated using a random‐effect meta‐analysis model.
Results
In total, 32 samples from 25 studies with 20 352 participants were included. Anxiety was assessed in all 25 studies and depression in 15 studies with pooled prevalence rates of 22% and 16%, respectively. Only two studies assessed insomnia, which was estimated at 19%. The prevalence of anxiety and depression was similar among frontline HCWs (18%), general HCWs (17%), and students (20%) while being noticeably higher in the general population (27%).
Conclusions
This is the first systematic review to investigate the mental health impact of the Covid‐19 pandemic in Southeast Asia. A considerable proportion of the general population and HCWs reported mild to moderate symptoms of anxiety and depression; the pooled prevalence rater, however, remain significantly lower than those reported in other areas such as China and Europe.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.06.03.21258001: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable We did not include studies that reported on populations of children, adolescents, or adult subpopulations (e.g., pregnant women). Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Cell Line Authentication Authentication: Non-original research or studies which were reviews, meta-analyses, qualitative and case studies, interviews, news reports, interventional studies, or studies that did not use validated instruments or validated cut off scores to quantify prevalence rates were also excluded. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources We searched the following databases for studies that met the inclusion criteria: … SciScore for 10.1101/2021.06.03.21258001: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics not detected. Sex as a biological variable We did not include studies that reported on populations of children, adolescents, or adult subpopulations (e.g., pregnant women). Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Cell Line Authentication Authentication: Non-original research or studies which were reviews, meta-analyses, qualitative and case studies, interviews, news reports, interventional studies, or studies that did not use validated instruments or validated cut off scores to quantify prevalence rates were also excluded. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources We searched the following databases for studies that met the inclusion criteria: PubMed, Embase, PsycINFO, and Web of Science from Feb 1st, 2020 to Feb 6th, 2021. PubMedsuggested: (PubMed, RRID:SCR_004846)Embasesuggested: (EMBASE, RRID:SCR_001650)PsycINFOsuggested: (PsycINFO, RRID:SCR_014799)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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:4.4 Strengths and Limitations: To our knowledge, this systematic review is the first to examine the pooled prevalence of depression, anxiety and insomnia in the general populations, HCWs and students during the COVID-19 outbreak in Southeast Asia. Despite the relative low number of studies per group and per country included in our meta-analysis, the total studies covered a considerable number of participants during a whole year of the pandemic. Furthermore, our subgroup analysis provided additional valuable insights of potential particular differences and /or vulnerabilities. Nevertheless, there are some key limitations to our review. There was considerable disparity between the number of papers reporting on the four subgroups of populations, ranging from 14 (general HCWs), to 9 (general population), 6 (frontline HCWs) and only 3 (students). In addition, only two papers evaluated the presence of sleep problems, thus limiting the power of the findings on insomnia. Again, the majority of studies were conducted across inherently different countries at varying points in the course of the pandemic and some countries were not represented in this analysis which may limit the generalizability of our findings. A variety of assessment tools were used to record the presence of mental health symptoms and different cut-off values were used to determine severity making it difficult to directly compare findings across studies. The quality of studies was also variable with high quality studi...
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.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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