Who takes care of those who care? - a survey on the mental health of health professionals facing the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world's scenarios as well as the routines and ways of living. Health professionals are part of the population acting in the front line, and in turn, they have become a risk group, which causes feelings such as stress and anxiety, with some may even showing signs of depression. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to characterize the presence of signs of anxiety, stress and depression and relate them to social skills in 70 health professionals in a city in Parana. For the evaluation of such variables, the HAD Instrument Scale was used to evaluate signs/symptoms of anxiety and depression, with the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10) also being used to evaluate the stress variable, in addition to an adapted open questionnaire (CABALLO, 2003) for social skills. From the results obtained, it could be observed that the majority of the participants presents signs of depression (79.7%), as well as signs of anxiety (78.6%). Furthermore, they also present high levels of stress when compared to the Brazilian normative sample. Thus, it can be understood that health professionals are predisposed to presenting high results, since they are exposed to a stressful and high-risk context and are also in need of caring strategies. Furthermore, it is important to further expand studies in the area, given that the context of the COVID-19 pandemic is something new and therefore, requires new forms of confrontation.