Social and electronic media exposure and generalized anxiety disorder among people during COVID-19 outbreak in Bangladesh: A preliminary observation

Abstract

Classified as a pandemic by the World Health Organization, the novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) has spread to Bangladesh since early March of 2020, and people are getting daily updates from the social and electronic media. We aimed at assessing the prevalence of anxiety among Bangladeshi people during the pandemic in connection with social media exposure (SME) and electronic media exposure (EME). For this cross-sectional study, data were collected from 880 participants by a self-administered online-based questionnaire relating personal characteristics, self-rate health (SRH), SME, and EME with anxiety. Findings show that around half of the surveyed population experienced a spike of anxiety (49.1%) during the pandemic, ten times higher than the national anxiety rate in 2019. The participants with an increased SME of over four hours per day experienced a higher level of anxiety than individuals with < = 2 hours exposure to social media. Similarly, the anxiety was higher among people with fair/bad SRH compared to individuals with excellent SRH. It is highly recommended to develop active surveillance and effective monitoring systems to reduce the spread of misinformation from both social and electronic media to improve the state of mental health conditions during the pandemic.

Prevalence of anxiety and depression in South Asia during COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis

“…The current evidence suggests the need for accurate information and measures for preventing COVID-19 pandemic 15,51,105 , which may address psychosocial distress among individuals and delivery that are well documented 38,96 . Moreover, local and national mental health policies may not have scopes for mobilizing resources in complex situations and public health emergencies.…”

“…Pooled prevalence of anxietyA total of 31 studies reported the prevalence of anxiety during COVID-19 in different samples from South Asian countries[46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56]58,59,[61][62][63][64][65][66]68,69,[71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80] . These studies used different scales to measureanxiety in respective samples, including the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7-item (GAD-7) scale (n = 16), Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale -21 Items (DASS-21) scales (n = 9), Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) (n = 4), Patient Health Questionnaire-4 (PHQ-4) (n = 1), and Self Reporting Questionnaire 20-items (SRQ-20) scale (n = 1).…”

Prolonged lockdown and academic uncertainties in Bangladesh: A qualitative investigation during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Consequently, students are experiencing an unprecedented rise of psychological disorders, such as anxiety, depression, stress, fear as well as sleep disturbance ( Islam et al., 2020 ; Islam et al., 2020 ; Khan et al., 2020 ). Compared to others, students had higher anxiety, depression, stress and lower mental well-being in Bangladesh ( Ahmed, Ahmed, Alim, Khan and Jobe, 2020b ), and the growing mental health ailment can be attributed to the home confinement and exposure to social and electronic media ( Hossain et al., 2020 ; Khan et al., 2020 ).…”

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown in a cohort of myasthenia gravis patients in India

“…People are made aware of preventive measures for disease control, and the vulnerable population groups through various government advisories. Misinformation about the nature and course of COVID-19 has caused panic among people, more so in the elderly and those who are having pre-existing medical conditions [ 12 ]. This is likely to affect the mental health, especially in MG patients who have experienced or aware of the impact of infection on worsening of symptoms.…”