Mental health during COVID-19 pandemic/Baghdad Al-Karkh.

Al-Jbouri, Noora Abd-Al-Hussein Dawood; Mashkury, Zainab Jawad Kadhim; Al-Ameri, Rawa Jaafar Kadhim

BACKGROUND This study reviewed the psychological consequences of the novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 and the challenges that face post-traumatic interventions. COVID-19 pandemic has multifaceted psychological effects extending social stigmatization to COVID-19 patients, resulted in delaying in medical care and hiding important medical history, particularly of travel, this in turn will increase the risk of transmission. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY To explore if there is significant impacts of public health emergency COVID-19 on mental health among clients attending Al/Karkh Care centers. METHODS Cross-sectional study describes the mental health status among clients attending Al-Karkh Health Centers during the COVID-19 pandemic, using mental health reports from Mental Health Unit/Al-Karkh Health Directorate, which were collected from January to August. Using (SPSS25) for statistical analysis. Statistical test Chi-square used and p value of ⩽.05 was considered significant. RESULTS The percentages of psychological disturbances among clients is higher throughout the first 7 months of 2019 than 2020, till August the percentage of psychological disturbances started to hike up in 2020 than in 2019 (6%), (5.4%) respectively. Throughout the months of 2020 up to August there was significant difference between male and female clients in mental disturbances p value <.0001. CONCLUSION The current study found that COVID-19 pandemic is expected to raise great challenges for mental health services in health care centers and constitute a mental health risk especially to women and girls compared to men.