The impact of SARS-CoV-2 transmission fear and COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of patients with primary immunodeficiency disorders, severe asthma, and other high-risk groups

Abstract

Background: The adverse effects of COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of high-risk group patients for morbidity and mortality and its impact on public health in the long term have not been clearly determined. Objective: To determine the level of COVID-19 related transmission fear and anxiety in healthcare workers and patients with primary immunodeficiency disorder (PID), severe asthma, and the ones with other comorbidities. Methods: The healthcare workers and patients with PID, severe asthma (all patients receiving biological agent treatment), malignancy, cardiovascular disease, hypertension (90% of patients receiving ACEI or ARB therapy), diabetes mellitus (42 % of patients receiving DPP-4 inhibitor therapy) were included in the study. A total of 560 participants, 80 individuals in each group, were provided. The hospital anxiety and depression scale ( HADS ) and Fear of illness and virus evaluation (FIVE ) scales were applied to the groups with face to face interview methods. Results: The mean age was 49.30 years and 306 (55 %) were female. The FIVE Scale and HADS-A scale scores of health care workers were significantly higher than other groups' scores (p = 0.001 and 0.006). The second-highest scores belonged to patients with PID. There was no significant difference between the groups for the HADS-D score (p=0.07). The lowest score in all scales was observed in patients with hypertension. Conclusions: This study demonstrated that in the pandemic process, patients with primary immunodeficiency, asthma patients, and other comorbid patients, especially healthcare workers, should be referred to the centers for the detection and treatment of mental health conditions.

Fear Factor in Seeking Dental Care among Saudis during COVID-19 Pandemic

“…With the global spread of this virus, a considerable degree of fear was spreading among the public [7,8]. Social networks during the pandemic generated various alarming news about the infection among the population [9].…”

Psychometric Validation of the Arabic Fear of Illness and Virus Evaluation

“…These findings ascertain that FIVE is credible in assessing the psychological conditions arising from COVID-19. Similarly, FIVE was positively correlated with Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale [38]. The correlation coefficient of FIVE with Anxiety subscale was high (r = 0.83) and moderate with depression subscale (r = 0.66) in a previous study [38].…”

“…Similarly, FIVE was positively correlated with Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale [38]. The correlation coefficient of FIVE with Anxiety subscale was high (r = 0.83) and moderate with depression subscale (r = 0.66) in a previous study [38]. FIVE was also correlated with both depressive symptomatology (PHQ-9) and posttraumatic stress (ITQ) [24].…”

“…The deleterious impact of infectious pandemics on individuals' mental health is well documented in the literature [35,36]. Assessing psychological influence of health disasters using various validated measuring tools [20,37,38] facilitates understanding how people would encounter and endure global pandemics and facilitates detecting individuals with mental health needs. Therefore, Fear of Illness and Virus Evaluation (FIVE) is a tool that was developed by Ehrenreich-May (In preparation) to estimate the severity and the impact of fears of the public during the COVID-19 global outbreak.…”

“…The fear of COVID-19 has a positive relationship with anxiety and depression [19,20,38]. In some extreme cases, fear of COVID-19 was associated with suicide attempts [42,43].…”