key: cord-0998982-gzo7a37b
authors: Paz, Clara; Mascialino, Guido; Adana‐Díaz, Lila; Rodríguez‐Lorenzana, Alberto; Simbaña‐Rivera, Katherine; Gómez‐ Barreno, Lenin; Troya, Maritza; Paez, María Ignacia; Cardenas, Javier; Gerstner, Rebekka M; Ortiz‐Prado, Esteban
title: Anxiety and depression in patients with confirmed and suspected COVID‐19 in Ecuador
date: 2020-07-01
journal: Psychiatry Clin Neurosci
DOI: 10.1111/pcn.13106
sha: e1f80077f89f5bdf17ad9ac4b787edd6d15c4a91
doc_id: 998982
cord_uid: gzo7a37b

nan

The rapid spread of the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 throughout the world has forced local and national administrations to take unprecedented measures to reduce the impact of the coronavirus diseases (COVID-19) pandemic (1) . In South America, the arrival of the virus took longer than in other regions of the world, nevertheless, the impact has already been unprecedent. Once collected, and after serving its clinical purpose, the information was deidentified and made available for research purposes. All participants included in the analyses were adults who had provided informed consent during data collection. The results that we are presenting here is a secondary data analysis of Ortiz-Prado et al. 2020 (2), which received an exemption from the Universidad de las Américas Ethics Committee. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

In total, 759 persons under epidemiological surveillance for COVID-19 completed the survey, 40.3% were confirmed and 59.7% were suspected patients. Comparisons of demographic and clinical characteristics of confirmed and suspected patients can be found in table 1. No significant differences were found for the proportion of males in each group. The mean age of the confirmed was higher than the suspected patients. No significant differences were found regarding the prevalence of depression and anxiety when comparing between confirmed and suspected cases.

However, the distribution of the patients according to the severity of depressive symptoms was different in the two populations. Confirmed patients presented higher symptom endorsement.

Zhang et al. (5) conducted a similar study in China, although with a smaller number of participants, but also comparing with the general population. The prevalence of depression was higher in their study (29.2%) for confirmed patients, but lower in suspected patients (9.8%) than in our data. Regarding the prevalence of anxiety, our study showed higher levels of anxiety in both confirmed (24.2% vs. 20.8%) and suspected patients (21.4% vs. 10.2%) than Zhang et al (5) study. The presence of higher anxiety symptoms might be explained by the critical situation that the Ecuadorian health system was going through at that time. Of note, only 28.6% met the cut-off for moderate to severe symptoms of anxiety and/or depression, and 33.6% reported no symptoms at all. Future studies might pay attention to the protective factors of those participants who did not present psychological symptoms even if they were experiencing confinement, isolation, mourning the loss of the loved ones, the presence of physical symptoms produced by COVID-19, or the lack of appropriate health care. To the authors best knowledge this is the first study presenting information of mental health status of Ecuadorians in epidemiological surveillance during the pandemic, however, our data did not allow to declare that the presence of psychological symptoms is a product of being under surveillance, it is necessary to assess general population to reach such conclusions.

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. a Total scores ≥ 10 in PHQ-9 and GAD-7 were considered to define the presence of depression and anxiety respectively.

The effect of control strategies to reduce social mixing on outcomes of the COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan, China: a modelling study

We thank all the staff of the mental health department of the MoPH who collaborated with us with personalized calls and the delivery of information to patients.

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.The project has been funded by the Dirección General de Investigación, Universidad de Las Américas, Quito, Ecuador.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.Accepted Article