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. 2023 Aug 31;13(2):1268-1284.
doi: 10.3126/nje.v13i2.52766. eCollection 2023 Aug.

The effect of COVID-19 on the mental health of the people in the Indian subcontinent: A scoping review

Russell Kabir  1 , Ancy Chandrababu Mercy Bai  1 , Haniya Zehra Syed  1 , Md Rakibul Hasan  1 , Divya Vinnakota  2 , Sujita Kumar Kar  3 , Rakesh Singh  4 , Brijesh Sathian  5 , S M Yasir Arafat  6
Affiliations

The effect of COVID-19 on the mental health of the people in the Indian subcontinent: A scoping review

Russell Kabir et al. Nepal J Epidemiol. .

Abstract

Indian subcontinent has high mental heath burden and low resources to cope the mental health challenges. Assessment of impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health would help to prioritize the resource allocations. We aimed to assess the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of people in the Indian subcontinent. Following the PRISMA 2020 guideline, a scoping review was performed by systematically searching the PubMed, Scopus, and Embase databases to identify original studies that assessed mental health conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Indian subcontinent. In this review, a total of 34 studies conducted between 2020 and 2022 were analyzed. The prevalence of anxiety disorders was found to range widely, from 2.5% in North Indian urban slum to 53% in Bangladesh and 21.7% in Pakistan. Similarly, the prevalence of depression varied widely, with rates ranging from 3.5% in North India to 29.8% in Pakistan. The prevalence of stress-related problems ranged from 18.3% in Pakistan to 59.7% in Bangladesh. Factors such as female gender, married status, healthcare workers, and mental illness were identified as important predictors of anxiety and depressive disorders. The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on mental health in Indian subcontinent varies widely based on study population and methods. Therefore, a cautious interpretation is needed while generalizing the study results.

Keywords: Anxiety; COVID-19; Depression; Indian subcontinent; Mental Health; pandemic.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests The authors declare no potential conflict of interests.

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Figure 1.
Figure 1.
The PRISMA 2020 statement: an updated guideline for reporting systematic reviews
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