Health care workers' mental health in the face of COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

Background

Healthcare workers are leading the way in treating patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Due to the high levels of psychological stress, this group is more likely to experience psychological issues. These psychological problems in healthcare providers include depression, anxiety, insomnia, stress and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The goal of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to find out how common these problems were in the face of COVID-19.

Methods

On 20 February 2022, systematic searches were conducted in the PubMed, Cochrane Library, Scopus, EMBASE, Science Direct, Web of Science and ProQuest databases. Two authors selected articles based on search keywords. As a last step, articles about the prevalence of psychological problems among healthcare workers in the face of COVID-19 were looked at and analysed for five different outcomes.

Results

The initial search yielded 18,609 articles. After reviewing the titles, abstracts and full texts of the articles, 44 were chosen for the final analysis and 29 were subjected to a meta-analysis. Insomnia, anxiety, depression, PTSD and stress are among the psychological issues faced by healthcare workers. Furthermore, the highest pooled prevalence of depression, anxiety, insomnia, PTSD and stress was 36% (95% confidence interval (CI) 24–50%), 47% (95% CI 22–74%), 49% (95% CI 28–70%), 37% (95% CI 19–59%) and 27% (95% CI 6–69%).

Conclusions

In this meta-analysis, insomnia was found to be the most common mental health problem, followed by anxiety, PTSD, depression and stress in healthcare workers in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Generally, the pooled prevalence of these mental health problems was higher among physicians, nurses and older staff in the subgroup analysis. As a result, health policymakers and managers of the health care system should think about effective interventions to promote mental health, paying particular attention to these two groups.

Key points

• Studies conducted in China reported more mental problems than in other countries.

• Health policymakers and health system managers should hold training programs to promote healthcare workers’ mental health with a particular focus on more vulnerable groups.

• The prevalence of PTSD, stress, anxiety, depression and insomnia were higher among physicians, nurses and older staff.

• Health systems at both national and local levels have to take older physicians, nurses and healthcare providers into consideration while designing interventions.

Keywords:

• Physician
• healthcare provider
• COVID-19
• psychology
• health
• mental health

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Ms. Fatemeh Ghaffarparast at the Islamic Azad University of Larestan branch for translating the English in the manuscript. The authors would like to thank Ms. A. Keivanshekouh at the Research Improvement Center of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences for improving the use of English in the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Shiraz University of Medical Sciences.