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Review
. 2021 Jun 26;7(7):e07393.
doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2021.e07393. eCollection 2021 Jul.

The global prevalence of depression, anxiety, stress, and, insomnia and its changes among health professionals during COVID-19 pandemic: A rapid systematic review and meta-analysis

Sultan Mahmud  1 , Sorif Hossain  1 , Abdul Muyeed  2 , Md Mynul Islam  1 , Md Mohsin  1
Affiliations
Review

The global prevalence of depression, anxiety, stress, and, insomnia and its changes among health professionals during COVID-19 pandemic: A rapid systematic review and meta-analysis

Sultan Mahmud et al. Heliyon. .

Abstract

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the health professionals who are at the frontline of this crisis have been facing extreme psychological disorders. This research aims to provide an overall scenario of the prevalence of depression, anxiety, stress, as well as insomnia and to inspect the changes in these prevalence over time by analyzing the existing evidence during this COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: A systematic search was performed on March 30, 2021, in PubMed, MEDLINE, Google Scholar databases, and Web of Science. To assess the heterogeneity, Q-test, I 2 statistics, and Meta regression and to search for the publication bias, Eggers's test and funnel plot were used. The random-effect model and subgroup analysis were performed due to the significant heterogeneity.

Results: Among eighty-three eligible studies in the final synthesis, 69 studies (n = 144649) assessed the depression prevalence of 37.12% (95% CI: 31.80-42.43), 75 studies (n = 147435) reported the anxiety prevalence of 41.42% (95% CI: 36.17-46.54), 41 studies (n = 82783) assessed the stress prevalence of 44.86% (95% CI: 36.98-52.74), 21 studies (n = 33370) enunciated the insomnia prevalence of 43.76% (95% CI: 35.83-51.68). The severity of the mental health problems among health professionals increased over the time during January 2020 to September 2020.

Limitations: A significant level of heterogeneity was found among psychological measurement tools and across studies.

Conclusions: Therefore, it is an emergency to develop psychological interventions that can protect the mental health of vulnerable groups like health professionals.

Keywords: Anxiety; COVID-19; Depression; Health professionals; Insomnia; Meta-analysis; Stress.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Flowchart describing the search strategy and inclusion/exclusion of studies by following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA 2009) guidelines.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Funnel plot of result of the prevalence of depression (a), anxiety (b), stress (c), and insomnia (d) among health professionals.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Forest plot showing the meta-analyses of the pooled prevalence of depression among health professionals during the pandemic.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Forest plot showing the meta-analyses of the pooled prevalence of anxiety among health professionals during the pandemic.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Forest plot showing the meta-analyses of the pooled prevalence of stress among health professionals during the pandemic.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Forest plot showing the meta-analyses of the pooled prevalence of insomnia among health professionals during the pandemic.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Forest plot showing changes of the pooled prevalence of depression (a), anxiety (b), stress (c), and insomnia (d) between study duration January 2020 to September 2020, among health professionals.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Bubble plots from meta-regression showing the changes in the prevalence of depression (a), anxiety (b), stress (c), and insomnia (d) with study duration.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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