While the COVID-19 pandemic has left the world reeling, the effects on the healthcare systems across the world has been devastating. It has posed significant challenges for health care workers, with many fearing for their own safety.
A new study has revealed that one in five healthcare workers have experienced depression, anxiety, and/or Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) during the ongoing pandemic.??
Yufei Li, Nathaniel Scherer, and colleagues at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK present these findings in the open-access journal?PLOS ONE?on March 10, showing how?facing a high workload and limited psychological support has been immensely damaging to healthcare workers.??
The researchers analyzed 65 studies from around the world, involving 97,333 healthcare workers across 21 countries.
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By amalgamating and statistically analyzing data from all 65 studies, the researchers estimated that 21.7 percent of the health care workers involved in the studies have experienced depression during the pandemic, 22.1 percent anxiety, and 21.5 percent PTSD.?
As per the study, Middle East has the highest pooled rates of depression (34.6 percent) and anxiety (28.9 percent).?
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Researchers took the average of results from nine of the 65 studies to estimate that 21.5% of health care workers across all regions experienced moderate levels of PTSD.??
These findings suggest the adverse effects that COVID-19 pandemic has had on the mental health of health care workers. With pandemic far from over, health care workers continue to find themselves countering not only coronavirus, but also its psychological impact.?
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