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. 2023 Feb 9;23(1):100.
doi: 10.1186/s12888-023-04574-6.

Higher anxiety and perceived trauma among COVID-19 patients: a prospective comparative study

Alireza Kordi  1 , Atiyeh Sarabi-Jamab  2 , Seyed Vahid Shariat  3 , Nastaran Rezaee  4 , Behnam Shariati  3 , Seyed Hamid Reza Faiz  5 , Fatemeh Sadat Mirfazeli  6
Affiliations

Higher anxiety and perceived trauma among COVID-19 patients: a prospective comparative study

Alireza Kordi et al. BMC Psychiatry. .

Abstract

Background and purpose: Psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, depression, and traumatic stress are not rare during infectious outbreaks, as the COVID-19 pandemic has posed a great concern to the general population. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether experiencing psychiatric symptoms during COVID-19 is the result of the burden of carrying an illness or the COVID-19 itself.

Method: Two hundred ten subjects and three different groups of participants (COVID-19 patients, university staff, and orthopedic patients) were recruited. They answered a demographic questionnaire, Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (YBOCS) test for OCD symptoms, Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R) for perceived trauma, Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI) for anxiety, and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) for depression assessments using phone or face-to-face interviews.

Result: At least one OCD symptom was observed in 85.7% of the subjects. However, there was no significant difference between the 3 groups (p = 0.2194). Perceived trauma was significantly higher among COVID-19 patients followed by university staff and orthopedic patients (23.73, 16.21, 11.51 mean IES-R scores respectively, p = 8.449e-14). COVID-19 patients also showed higher anxiety (mean BAI score: 17.00) than the university staff and orthopedic patients' group (9.22 and 5.56 respectively) (p = 6.175e-08). BDI score did not show much variation for depression, the mean score was 9.66, 9.49, and 6.7 for the COVID-19 patients, university staff, and orthopedic patients respectively, (p = 0.2735).

Conclusion: Perceived trauma and anxiety symptoms are significantly higher in COVID-19 patients and the symptoms of OCD and depression do not differ between COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 people, so the necessity of screening and following treatment of patients with COVID-19 should be kept in mind.

Trial registration: IR.IUMS.FMD.REC.1399.761.

Keywords: Anxiety; COVID-19; Coronavirus; Depression; OCD; Obsessions-compulsion-disorder; Perceived trauma.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Correlation matrix for overall perceived trauma score. In this figure, the distribution of each variable is shown on the diagonal. On the bottom of the diagonal the bivariate scatter plots with a fitted line are displayed and on the top of the diagonal, the value of the correlation plus the significance level as stars. Each significance level is associated with a symbol as follows: p-values of 0, 0.001, 0.01, 0.05, and 0.1, stand for symbols of “***”, “**”, “*”, respectively
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Perceived trauma score scheme and comparison in the study
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Anxiety score scheme and comparison between three groups of COVID-19 patients, orthopedic patients and university staff in the study
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Depression score scheme and comparison in the study
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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