2. Conduct a survey on mental health and fitness during covid-19 by taking10 quantitative questions. Minimum 20 people should be surveyed. Present the information gathered per question by a paragraph
Answers
Answer:
The pandemic of Corona Virus (COVID-19) hit India recently; and the associated uncertainty is increasingly testing psychological resilience of the masses. When the global focus has mostly been on testing, finding a cure and preventing transmission; people are going through a myriad of psychological problems in adjusting to the current lifestyles and fear of the disease. Since there is a severe dearth of researches on this issue, we decided to conduct an online survey to evaluate its psychological impact.
Methods
From 26th to 29th March an online survey (FEEL-COVID) was conducted using principles of snowballing, and by invitation through text messages to participate. The survey collected data on socio-demographic and clinical variables related to COVID-19 (based on the current knowledge); along with measuring psychological impact with the help of Impact of Event–revised (IES-R) scale.
Results
There were a total of 1106 responses from around 64 cities in the country. Out of these 453 responses had at least one item missing; and were excluded from the analysis. The mean age of the respondents was around 41 years with a male female ratio of 3:1 and around 22% respondents were health care professionals. Overall approximately one third of respondents had significant psychological impact (IES-R score > 24). Higher psychological impact was predicted with younger age, female gender and comorbid physical illness. Presence of physical symptoms and contact history predicted higher psychological impact, but did not reach statistical significance.
Conclusion
During the initial stages of COVID-19 in India, almost one-third respondents had a significant psychological impact. This indicates a need for more systematic and longitudinal assessment of psychological needs of the population, which can help the government in formulating holistic interventions for affected individuals.
Citation: Varshney M, Parel JT, Raizada N, Sarin SK (2020) Initial psychological impact of COVID-19 and its correlates in Indian Community: An online (FEEL-COVID) survey. PLoS ONE 15(5): e0233874. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0233874
Editor: Abdallah M. Samy, Faculty of Science, Ain Shams University (ASU), EGYPT
Received: April 7, 2020; Accepted: May 14, 2020; Published: May 29, 2020
Copyright: © 2020 Varshney et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: Data underlying the study cannot be made publicly available due to ethical concerns regarding participant privacy, as imposed by the Institute Ethics Committee of the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences, New Delhi. Qualified researchers may request access to this data from the Institute Ethics Committee at [email protected].
Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.