Factors Influencing Mental Health During Covid-19 Outbreak: An Exploratory Survey among Indian Population

  1. Absar Ahmad
  2. Ishrat Rahman
  3. Maitri Agarwal

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Abstract

Introduction: This paper fulfills an identified need to study the mental health status of the population under situations like lockdown, thereby helping fill a persistent gap in Indian research on this issue, and present research on the impact of lockdown on mental health during epidemics is limited, especially in India. This study aims to scale the association between anxiety and sociodemographic factors during the coronavirus disease 2019 lockdown among the general Indian population.Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional nationwide study designed to enroll the general population. The inclusion criteria for this study were Indian citizens aged 18 years and above. The study was conducted from March 29, 2020, to April 12, 2020, using an online google questionnaire. The anxiety among respondents was detected and measured using a Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) Scale, which consists of seven questions (in English), that is, GAD-7.Results: Responders were 392, and from these participants, the prevalence of anxiety was 25.3%. The predictors of anxiety were gender, religion, occupation as business/self-employed, marital status, family size, health status, and sleep deprivation based on the bivariate logistic regression analysis.Conclusion: This study reports the early prevalence of anxiety among the Indian population who were grounded at their homes during lockdown due to coronavirus pandemic in the country.

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  1. Version published to 10.17532/jhsci.2020.950
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.03.20081380: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: The consent form was also included in the online survey tool regarding their participation in the study.
    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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Our study has some limitations, including sampling strategy, which is non-random sampling limiting the generalizability. Another limitation was that the causality relationship could not be entirely ascertained because the design of the study is cross-sectional. Further studies with a larger sample size may shed more light on this issue. Other limitations pertain to the study’s dependent measure, i.e. anxiety. The cut-point used in the present study may have misclassified a certain percentage of individuals. Despite the limitations mentioned above; this study is an important step in the field of this type of research and has policy implications. The findings suggest a need for more research to better understand the epidemiology of anxiety among people during emergence. In addition to epidemiologic investigations on prevalence and risk factors of anxiety, concerted efforts are needed to be put forth into developing evidence-based healthy coping techniques and problem-solving skills for people at risk.

    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.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.05.03.20081380v1 on medRxiv