Common Phobias among Egyptian Primary Schoolchildren: An Emergency Trigger for Panic Disorder due to Corona Pandemic

Abstract

BACKGROUND: In the wake of the adverse situation we are currently facing globally due to the coronavirus pandemic outbreak, it is normal to feel stressed, confused, and scared but what is abnormal is to turn this to panic. Phobias are more pronounced than fears. They develop when a person has an exaggerated or unrealistic sense of danger that may be evolved to experience panic attacks.
 AIM: Our objective was to identify the prevalence of most common phobias as well as panic disorder (PD) due to the coronavirus pandemic among Egyptian primary schoolchildren and their determinants.
 METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 2015 schoolchildren from 3 to 6 grades in three governorates of Egypt. Seven types of phobias were investigated: Agoraphobia, phobias from darkness, animal, untreatable illness (mainly coronavirus), insects, height, and social phobia. The child’s self-reported PD symptoms were assessed using DSM-IV with psychiatric diagnoses.
 RESULTS: Almost two-thirds of the surveyed primary schoolchildren have phobias of the low score (<9) versus one-third who had high phobias score (61.% vs. 35%, respectively) with highly significant difference (p < 0.001). The most prevalent phobias were from heights (66.5%) followed by darkness (60.0%). The important predictors of phobias were: Being a male child, living in an urban area, and studying at governmental school at fifth or sixth-grade residence. The prevalence of PD due to the corona epidemic is very high, it is reported by almost half of the surveyed primary schoolchildren. Fear of losing any of their family members, especially grandparents, was reported to be the highest PD symptom (97%).
 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION: Phobia from heights and darkness was the most common. The prevalence of PD due to the coronavirus epidemic is reported to be very high. Calming down children who might be experienced with a phobia that is triggering their PD is recommended.

Egyptian patients’/guardians’ experiences and perception about clinical informed consent and its purpose: Cross sectional study

“…This finding indicates that patients/guardians are caring about the quality and clarity of the information rather than about the amount of information received. This was supported by many community-based studies that were done for empowering women by information to have their rights and proved to be very successful in achieving a positive impact on health [19,26,41,42]. Furthermore, as reported in this study, written consent is the predominant tool for the informed consent process which is still the preferred method for pre-operative anesthetic counseling.…”

“…In Egypt, IC and sharing information are among the mandated Egyptian patients' rights since 2005 [14] along with other rights such as access to health care [15][16][17][18] in general and specifically for reproductive rights [19,20], choice of care for communicable and non-communicable diseases [21][22][23], right for breastfeeding [24], school feeding [25], health education [26], participation in the treatment plan, confidentiality and privacy [27,28]. Moreover, the rights to donate organs after death [29].…”

Consecuencias del COVID-19 en la salud psicológica y emocional en escolares de primaria: una revisión sistemática

“…Por último, para saber más sobre las fobias y el trastorno de pánico, Metwally et al, (2020) advierten que las fobias son más comunes en menores que en adultos y a través de su estudio destacaron que los sujetos mostraron miedos irracionales con relación a caerse de lugares altos (66.5%), a la oscuridad (60%), a ir al baño en la oscuridad (57.1 %) y a tener alguna enfermedad intratable (44.2%). Además, se muestra que más del 5% de los y las menores evaluados, tienen entre 5 y 12 tipos de fobias también que los niños padecen más que las niñas, un total de 4.4 veces más (p<.001).…”

“…Los miedos y las fobias irracionales también se vieron incrementados durante el período de confinamiento (Liu et al, 2020;Metwally et al, 2020) y los cambios en el humor de los más pequeños también se percibieron afectados (Mantovani et al, 2021;Morgüll et al, 2020). Al parecer, así como va aumentando la edad aparecen más síntomas somáticos y malestar emocional en los niños y niñas (Tang et al, 2021;Qin et al,2021).…”

Impact of Using Social Marketing Principles on Promoting Breastfeeding Practices and Physical Growth: an Egyptian Community Based Longitudinal Study

“…Any nutritional de ciencies during this time can be manifested in the form of impaired cognitive development, and physical growth (29,30) compromised educational achievement, and ultimately low economic productivity later in life (31). Furthermore, the role of breastfeeding in boosting child immunity was evident and the weaknesses of eating habits decreased child immunity and considered as an entry point to COVID-19 (32) and as a trigger for increasing phobia (33) Optimization of breastfeeding practices could reduce high mortality rates in children younger than 5 years.…”