COVID-19 in Wuhan: Immediate Psychological Impact on 5062 Health Workers

Zhou Zhu; Shabei Xu; Hui Wang; Zheng Liu; Jianhong Wu; Guo Li; Jinfeng Miao; Chenyan Zhang; Yuan Yang; Wenzhe Sun; Suiqiang Zhu; Yebin Fan; Junbo Hu; Jihong Liu; Wei Wang

The psychological protective measures included the following 5 items: (1) Have you joined Tongji WeChat Balint Group? (2) Have you received care provided by hospital and department administrators? (3) Are you satisfied with full coverage of all departments with protective measures for nosocomial infection? (4) Are you satisfied with your work shift arrangement?(5) Are you satisfied with the logistical support and comfortable accommodations provided by Tongji Hospital? OUTCOMES PHQ-9 Scale was used to measure the depression symptoms. A cutoff of ≥ 10 has been recommended for diagnosis of major depression, which provides adequate sensitivity (88.0 percent) and specificity (88.0 percent) 11 . GAD-7 Scale was used to identify anxiety disorders. A cutoff score ≥ 8 is recommended to identify clinically important anxiety symptoms, with adequate specificity (82.0 percent) and sensitivity (77.0 percent) 12 . IES-R is a 22-item self-reported measure applied to assess subjective stress caused by traumatic event, describing the three symptoms including avoidance, intrusion, and hyperarousal. We defined the psychological stress when the IES-R score ＞ 33 points 13 . The selected 3 questionnaires had good internal consistency with Cronbach's α coefficients of more than 0.80.