Effect of COVID‐19 pandemic on anxiety depression and intention to go to hospital in chronic patients

Kaya, Yasemin; Bostan, Sedat; Kaya, Ahmet; Karaman, Ömer; Karataş, Ahmet; Dereli, Seçkin

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of the COVID‐19 pandemic on anxiety depression and intention to go to the hospital in chronic patients. METHODS: The Bostan Intention to Go to Hospital Scale developed by one researcher (SB) as the data collection tool and the Beck Anxiety‐Depression Inventories were used. RESULTS: Of all patients, 56.8% stated that they would go to the hospital in case of emergency and 28.3% expressed that they did not want to go to the hospital even in this case. 50% of the participants said that they did not want to go to the hospital under any circumstances during the pandemic process. As a result of the correlation analysis, there was an inverse correlation between the anxiety‐depression levels and encountering COVID‐19 patients and having a relative with COVID‐19 (P = .001). Inverse correlation was found between intention to go to hospital and encountering COVID‐19 patients (P = .001). CONCLUSION: It was revealed that chronic patients did not have any intentions to go to hospital during the COVID‐19 pandemic and only half of the people were willing to go to the hospital in case of emergency. Anxiety and depression levels were found to increase when COVID‐19 patients were encountered or a relative had COVID‐19.