Coronavirus Disease and its role in the Prevalence of PTSD Symptoms among Patients and Frontline Health Care Workers

Abstract

The Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) outbreak, which has emerged in China in December 2019, has remained an alarming issue universally in terms of its horrible features including significant loss of human lives and universal health crisis with massive and negative consequences for individuals and societies. Both previous and recent studies declared this infectious disease is highly traumatic experiences and suggesting that it has substantial effects on psychological well-being and may cause chronic psychological distress. Therefore, the current study was conducted to investigate the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a consequence to COVID-19 pandemic in COVID-19 recovered Patients as well as in Frontline Health Care Workers (HCWs) in District Malakand Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), Pakistan. For this cross-sectional survey research 223 [n=223] participants were selected from the entire population through Cochran’s sample size formula. 170 [76.2%] samples were COVID-19 recovered patients and 53 [23.8%] samples were Frontline HCWs including 15 [28.3%] Doctors, 8 [15.1%] Nurses and 30 [56.6%] Paramedics from category “A” Hospital Batkhaila. The selected samples were assessed through the Urdu version of Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-42) and PTSD Checklist for civilian by using simple random sampling technique. The results revealed significant prevalence of PTSD symptoms in COVID-19 recovered Patients as well as in Frontline HCWs, while the differences were not statistically significant between COVID-19 recovered Patients and Frontline HCWs. In conclusion, the results of the present study must be considered with regard to the way that the direction of the pestilence curve has been for time being effectively flattened in the District Malakand.