The distress of Iranian adults during the Covid-19 pandemic - More distressed than the Chinese and with different predictors

Asghar Afshar Jahanshahi; Maryam Mokhtari Dinani; Abbas Nazarian Madavani; Jizhen Li; Stephen X Zhang

Our online survey received 1058 responses from all 30 provinces in Iran. Table 1 contains the descriptive characteristics of the participants. Of the participants, 53.8% were female, 869 (82.1%) reported being free from the disease, 7 (0.07%) reported having Covid-19, and 182 (17.2%) were unsure of their disease status. In the past week, 30.0%, 4.3% and 1.1% of the participants exercised on average 1, 2 and 3 hours per day respectively, 62.9% of them did not exercise in the past week, and the remaining 1.3% exercised 4 hours or more per day. By employment status, 71.5% were employed, 13.2% were unemployed, 10.5% were studying, and the rest 4.7% were retired. By working situations, 38.6% were working/studying from home, 26.6% were not working/studying due to the outbreak, 18.0% were not working/studying before and during the outbreak, and 16.9% still worked in an office. The participants reported their distress level in the past week using CPDI, which had a Cronbach's alpha of 0.91. The mean (SD) score of CPDI in the sample was 34.54 (14.92), higher than the CPDI of 23.65 (15.45) reported in China from January 31 to February 10, 2020 5 . The difference in the mean values between Iranian and Chinese samples is 10.9 (t=22.7; p<0.0001; 95% CI: 10.0 to 11.8). Based on the cut-off values of distress in CPDI, respectively 47.0% and 14.1% of the Iranian adults experienced mild to moderate and severe psychological distress, compared to 29.3% and 5.1% respectively in the Chinese sample 5 . . CC-BY-ND 4.0 International license It is made available under a author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity.