COVID 19 effect on mental health
Description
A cross-sectional study was conducted to evaluate the severity of anxiety among medical students due to COVID-19. The study was conducted from June, 2020 to July, 2020 at Ayub Medical College, Abbottabad, Pakistan. The target population was MBBS students from all 5 years of study. We calculated the sample size using the formula n = z2 * p * (1 - p) / e2, where n is the sample size, z is the standard normal deviate corresponding to the confidence level (1.96 for 95%), and e is the desired precision (0.05). We used the p as 0.34, using a meta-analysis that concluded that 34% of the medical students globally had anxiety as the value of p and obtained a sample size of 344. However, due to time and resource constraints, we selected 200 as the size. We obtained a list of all enrolled medical students from the college administration assigned each student a unique number. We used a random number generator to select 344 students. We approached the selected students and recruited volunteers until the total number reached 200. The response rate 60%. The sample was representative of the target population in terms of gender, age, and year of study. The inclusion criteria for our study were that participants were enrolled in the MBBS program at Ayub Medical College, Abbottabad, Pakistan, and that they were willing to complete the study questionnaire. Verbal consent was obtained from all participants before they completed the questionnaire. They were informed about the purpose, procedures, risks, and benefits of the study, as well as their right to withdraw at any time. They were also assured that their responses would be kept confidential and anonymous. A questionnaire was distributed to the students, which included 8 questions about their demographics, while in the second part we used GAD-7 (generalized anxiety disorder-7) to measure their levels of anxiety. GAD-7 asks 7 questions where the responses are quantified from 1 to 4. The range of the total score can be from 0 to 21. An additional variable named “levels of anxiety” was created in SPSS to translate the total score to either “minimal”, “mild”, “moderate” or “severe” anxiety. Both data entry and analysis were done in SPSS version 26. Categorical variables from demographics were described as “frequency” and “frequency percentage”, while quantitative variables were defined as “mean”, “standard deviation” and “range (Maximum and minimum)”. The results of the responses to GAD-7 were reported as frequencies of students whose scores were represented according to the previously described variable “levels of anxiety”. Potential sources of bias were addressed by stratifying the sample by gender, marital status, having a supportive roommate, family income, year of study, and anxiety history, and testing the association between each factor and levels of anxiety using chi-squared tests. A p-value of less than or equal 0.05 was set as the threshold for the test of significance.