Mental Health Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Mexican Population: A Systematic Review.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an impact on mental health in the general population, but no systematic synthesis of evidence of this effect has been undertaken for the Mexican population. Relevant studies were identified through the systematic search in five databases until December, 2021. The selection of studies and the evaluation of their methodological quality were performed in pairs. The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) was used for study quality appraisal. The protocol of this systematic review was registered with PROSPERO (protocol ID: CRD42021278868). This review included 15 studies, which ranged from 252 to 9361 participants, with a total of 26,799 participants. The findings show that COVID-19 has an impact on the Mexican population's mental health and is particularly associated with anxiety, depression, stress and distress. Females and younger age are risk factors for development mental health symptoms. Mitigating the negative effects of COVID-19 on mental health should be a public health priority in Mexico.

Mental Health Problems Due to Social Isolation During the COVID-19 Pandemic in a Mexican Population.

Introduction: Social isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic has been identified as a risk factor of several mental disorders. Therefore, the present work aimed to evaluate the effect of social isolation experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of a Mexican population. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted in individuals of 18 years of age and over. The questioner was structured to identify onset or worsening of psychiatric symptoms due to social isolation by COVID-19. The survey included changes in eating habits, changes in personal hygiene habits, the starting the use or increased the use of psychoactive substances, symptoms of depression or post-traumatic stress. Results: A total of 1,011 individuals were included in the analysis. The majority were women (68.84%). Changes in eating habits were reported in 38.51% of the participants, 67.80% reported having their physical self-perception distorted or having started a low-calorie diet. Regarding symptoms of depression, 46.10% participants indicated to have at least one depressive symptom, and 4.46% reported suicidal ideation during social isolation. Interestingly, 6.09% of individuals reported that they used to have depressive symptoms prior the COVID-19 pandemic and those symptoms decreased due to social isolation. Additionally, 2.27% of individuals presented symptoms of post-traumatic stress due to the possibility of getting COVID-19. Conclusions: In this work we identified how social isolation has impacted the mental health of the Mexican population. We observed that practically all the symptoms evaluated were affected during isolation, such as personal hygiene and eating habits. Depression and suicidal ideation were the ones that increased the most in the general population, while in individuals who had symptoms of depression before isolation, these symptoms decreased during social isolation.

Knowledge, Emotions and Stressors in Front-Line Healthcare Workers during the COVID-19 Outbreak in Mexico.

The aim of this study was to explore the knowledge, emotions and perceived stressors by healthcare workers who were in contact with infected patients during the COVID-19 outbreak. An online cross-sectional survey was applied. Data were collected from N = 263 healthcare workers in Tabasco State, Mexico. We developed and administered a questionnaire, which consisted of sociodemographic characteristics, plus four sections. The sections evaluated were (1) knowledge of COVID-19; (2) feelings/emotions during the COVID-19 outbreak; (3) factors that caused stress and (4) factors that helped to reduce stress. Surveyed individuals were divided into three groups: physicians, nurses and other healthcare workers. When we evaluated their knowledge of COVID-19 we observed that the majority of healthcare workers in the three groups reported that they knew about COVID-19. Physicians indicated that they felt insecure about practicing their profession (62.5%) due to the high risk of being in contact with SARS-CoV-2. With regards to stressor factors, the risk of transmitting COVID-19 to their families was the main factor causing moderate to high stress (95.4%). Finally, we found that "your profession puts your life at risk" was the only factor associated with feeling nervous and scared (PR: 3.15; 95% CI: 1.54-6.43). We recommended health education campaigns, introductory courses on COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, management protocols and the provision of protection equipment to health workers in order to reduce personal and professional fears of contagion and to improve the health system in Mexico when facing epidemics.

Features of patients that died for COVID-19 in a hospital in the south of Mexico: A observational cohort study.

BACKGROUND: Due to the wide spread of SARS-CoV2 around the world, the risk of death in individuals with metabolic comorbidities has dangerously increased. Mexico has a high number of infected individuals and deaths by COVID-19 as well as an important burden of metabolic diseases; nevertheless, reports about features of Mexican individuals with COVID-19 are scarce. The aim of this study was to evaluate demographic features, clinical characteristics and the pharmacological treatment of individuals who died by COVID-19 in the south of Mexico. METHODS: We performed an observational study including the information of 185 deceased individuals with confirmed diagnoses of COVID-19. Data were retrieved from medical records. Categorical data were expressed as proportions (%) and numerical data were expressed as mean ± standard deviation. Comorbidities and overlapping symptoms were plotted as Venn diagrams. Drug clusters were plotted as dendrograms. RESULTS: The mean age was 59.53 years. There was a male predominance (60.1%). The mean hospital stay was 4.75 ± 4.43 days. The most frequent symptoms were dyspnea (88.77%), fever (71.42%) and dry cough (64.28%). Present comorbidities included diabetes (60.63%), hypertension (59.57%) and obesity (43.61%). The main drugs used for treating COVID-19 were azithromycin (60.6%), hydroxychloroquine (53.0%) and oseltamivir (27.3%). CONCLUSIONS: Mexican individuals who died of COVID-19 had shorter hospital stays, higher frequency of shortness of breath, and higher prevalence of diabetes than individuals from other countries. Also, there was a high frequency of off-label use of drugs for their treatment.