Depression, Anxiety and Stress Levels among Chronic Disease Patients During COVID-19 Pandemic in Dessie Town Hospitals, Ethiopia

Abstract

Introduction: Coronavirus disease 2019 was first detected in China in December 2019. In Ethiopia, depression, anxiety, and stress levels of chronic disease patients were not known during COVID-19. Thus, this study aimed to assess depression, anxiety, and stress levels of chronic disease patients in government and private hospitals of Dessie town during COVID-19. Methods: Hospital-based cross-sectional study design was used. The Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale-21 was used to measure depression, anxiety, and stress of chronic disease patients during the current pandemic. Both binary and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to identify factors, and a significant association was declared at p-value < 0.05 in multivariate analysis. Results and Discussion: The overall anxiety, depression, and stress level were 19.9%, 21.5%, and 17.7%, respectively. In multivariate analysis, older age, female gender, urban residency, duration of living with chronic diseases, and presence of comorbidities were associated with depression of chronic disease patients during the pandemic at p-value <0.05. Age, female gender, presence of comorbidities, and no social support were associated with anxiety. Urban residency, use of hand sanitizer, those who had respiratory manifestations, and travel history in the last two weeks were significantly associated with stress levels. Conclusion: A significant number of chronic disease patients had depression, anxiety, and stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, governmental and non-governmental organizations, health professionals, media, and hospital administrators should be involved to decrease the depression, anxiety, and stress of chronic disease patients during the pandemic. Moreover, we encourage researchers to conduct comparative longitudinal studies to assess depression, anxiety, and stress levels of chronic disease patients before and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.