Prevalence of psychological symptoms among Ebola survivors and healthcare workers during the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

The 2014–2015 Ebola epidemic was considered to be the largest and most complex outbreak, which caused 11,310 reported deaths. The epidemic disease can cause a mental health crisis, however, there is only a small amount of scientific literature available related to this health issue so far. We evaluated the psychological symptoms of 161 participants including Ebola survivors and healthcare workers in Sierra Leone, analyzed the impact of job classification, education level on psychological status. We found that the order of total general severity index (GSI) scores from high to low was EVD survivors, SL medical staff, SL logistic staff, SL medical students, and Chinese medical staff. There were 5 dimensions (obsession-compulsion, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, and paranoid ideation) extremely high in EVD survivors. GSI were associated with university education negatively. We believed our information is necessary to develop the comprehensive emergency response plan for emerging infectious disease outbreak.

Mental health problems and social media exposure during COVID-19 outbreak

“…COVID-19 outbroke in Wuhan, China. These findings are consistent with the previous studies' that exposing public health emergency can cause public mental health problems, such as Wenchuan and Lushan earthquakes [17], 2014 Ebola Outbreak [7,18], and SARS [19]. Social media is one of main channels updating the COVID-19 information [3].…”

Psychological symptoms of ordinary Chinese citizens based on SCL-90 during the level I emergency response to COVID-19

“…According to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between April 2009 and April 2010 alone, it infected more than 60 million people in the United States and caused 12,469 deaths (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). Generally speaking, the outbreak of an epidemic will cause a crisis of psychological health (Ji et al, 2017;Kamara et al, 2017;Maunder et al, 2003), and therefore, we must pay attention to people's psychological health in the fight against the epidemic. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, some research groups have applied a selfmade scale to assess the psychological impact of the epidemic on Chinese people (Qiu et al, 2020;Wang et al, 2020).…”

“…, while people who have undergone quarantine tend to be aware of the fear and risk perceptions (Tracy et al, 2009;Van Bortel et al, 2016). Based on the Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90), research groups used to analyze the psychological impact of the epidemic outbreak on medical staff or survivors (Cai et al, 2017;Ji et al, 2017;Li et al, 2015;Tanaka et al, 2016). So far, only limited researches have analyzed the psychological symptoms and experiences of people during the COVID-19 without the SCL-90 (Qiu et al, 2020;Wang et al, 2020;Yang et al, 2020).…”

Lassa Fever-associated Stigmatization among Staff and Students of the University of Benin, Nigeria

“…The focus has been more on the impact the disease on the mental health status of health professionals than the potential level of stigmatization experienced from the social cycle-institutional, community, state, regional, and national. In the study by Ji et al [23], both healthcare workers who treated patients with hemorrhagic fever and their survivors were found to be prone and demonstrated psychological symptoms following outbreaks. Among healthcare workers, psychological effects included coping with the deaths of colleagues, anxiety, fear of contamination, threats to their lives, and working excessive number of hours-which reduce work efficiency and increase occupational risks.…”