Social determinants of self-reported psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional study

ABSTRACT

Total lockdown caused deleterious mental health to many, resulting from a sudden change in daily routine, working and self-isolation at home, and job and income losses. Therefore, the current study aims to assess the social determinants of self-reported psychological distress in Malaysian adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. Snowball and purposive sampling approaches were adopted to enroll potential respondents. Respondents were required to self-report gender, age, ethnicity, educational attainment, marital status, number of dependents, and the presence of clinically diagnosed psychological disorders. Psychological distress during the pandemic was assessed using 21-item of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21). The findings revealed that respondents with primary/secondary educational attainment were 1.962 times (95% CI: 1.018–3.781, p= 0.044) more likely to suffer from depression than those with tertiary educational attainment. Conversely, the Malaysian Indians had significantly lower odds for depression compared to Malaysian Malays (AOR = 0.538, 95% CI: 0.302–0.957, p= 0.035). Likewise, females were found to have significantly greater odds for anxiety (AOR = 2.369, 95% CI: 1.317–4.260, p= 0.004) and stress (AOR = 1.976, 95% CI: 1.007–3.879, p = 0.048) than males. Being single was at significantly higher odds for anxiety (AOR = 2.032, 95% CI: 1.133–3.646, p= 0.017) during the pandemic. This study highlights the urgency to address the escalated psychological distress in Malaysian adults during the pandemic.

KEYWORDS:

• Depression
• anxiety
• stress
• COVID-19

Disclosure statement

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

Authors’ contribution

Seok Tyug Tan: Conceptualization, Methodology, Supervision, Validation, Writing- Original draft preparation, Reviewing and Editing. Louisa Lee: Data curation, Software, Writing- Original draft preparation.

Ethical approval

Ethical approval was obtained from the Management and Science University Ethics Committee with a reference number MSU-RMC-02/FR01/06/L1/040.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.