The following is a summary of the “Higher anxiety and perceived trauma among COVID-19 patients: a prospective comparative study,” published in the February 2023 issue of Psychiatry by Kordi, et al.
Anxiety, despair, and traumatic stress are common during viral epidemics like the COVID-19 pandemic. This study investigated whether COVID-19-related psychiatric symptoms are caused by disease or the virus. Around 210 COVID-19 patients, university workers, and orthopedic patients were recruited. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire, Yale-Brown Obsessive–Compulsive Scale (YBOCS) 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 via phone or face-to-face interviews.
About 85.7% had OCD symptoms. The 3 groups did not differ significantly (P = 0.2194). COVID-19 patients reported the most trauma, followed by university employees and orthopedic patients (23.73, 16.21, 11.51 mean IES-R scores, P = 8.449e-14). In addition, COVID-19 patients had higher anxiety (17.00 BAI score) than university personnel (9.22) and orthopedic patients (5.56) (P= 6.175e-08).
BDI scores for COVID-19 patients, university employees, and orthopedic patients were 9.66, 9.49, and 6.7, respectively (P = 0.2735). Screening and treating COVID-19 patients is important since they have greater rates of perceived trauma and anxiety and no difference in OCD or depression.
Source: bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-023-04574-6
