RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Depression and anxiety were both ranked among the top 25 leading causes of global burden of diseases in 2019 prior to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The pandemic affected, and in many cases threatened, the health and lives of millions of people across the globe and within the first year, global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25% with the greatest influx in places highly affected by COVID-19. AIM: To explore the psychological impact of the pandemic and resultant restrictions in different countries using an opportunistic sample and online questionnaire in different phases of the pandemic. METHODS: A repeated, cross-sectional online international survey of adults, 16 years and above, was carried out in 10 countries (United Kingdom, India, Canada, Bangladesh, Ukraine, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Egypt, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia). The online questionnaire was based on published approaches to understand the psychological impact of COVID-19 and the resultant restrictions. Five standardised measures were included to explore levels of depression [patient health questionnaire (PHQ-9)], anxiety [generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) assessment], impact of trauma [the impact of events scale-revised (IES-R)], loneliness (a brief loneliness scale), and social support (The Multi-dimensional Scale of Perceived Social support). RESULTS: There were two rounds of the online survey in 10 countries with 42866 participants in Round 1 and 92260 in Round 2. The largest number of participants recruited from the United Kingdom (112985 overall). The majority of participants reported receiving no support from mental health services throughout the pandemic. This study found that the daily cumulative COVID-19 cases had a statistically significant effect on PHQ-9, GAD-7, and IES-R scores. These scores significantly increased in the second round of surveys with the ordinary least squares regression results with regression discontinuity design specification (to control lockdown effects) confirming these results. The study findings imply that participants' mental health worsened with high cumulative COVID-19 cases. CONCLUSION: Whist we are still living through the impact of COVID-19, this paper focuses on its impact on mental health, discusses the possible consequences and future implications. This study revealed that daily cumulative COVID-19 cases have a significant impact on depression, anxiety, and trauma. Increasing cumulative cases influenced and impacted education, employment, socialization and finances, to name but a few. Building a database of global evidence will allow for future planning of pandemics, particularly the impact on mental health of populations considering the cultural differences.
RESUMO
BACKGROUND: Internet gaming, though getting popular, is becoming a risk to physical and psychological health, especially in adolescents, as it contributes to sedentary lifestyle. To gauge the extent of the problem in our setup, we decided to find the frequency of internet gaming disorder in students of Peshawar and identify their motives for playing these games. METHODS: This Cross-sectional survey was conducted from February to December 2018 and included students of Private and Public institutes of Peshawar. They were invited to complete a questionnaire comprising of Internet Gaming Disorder Scale-Short Form (IGDS-SF9), which includes 9 questions, with some additional demographic questions. The data were analysed using SPSS v.25. RESULTS: The mean age of the sample (n=2116) was 21.5±2.1 years with the age range of 16-28 years. The cronbach's alpha reliability of IGDS-SF9 in our study was 0.805. Majority of the participants were males (n=1261, 59.6%) and were from Private sector institutes (n=1314, 62.1%). A total of 32 (1.5%) students reported having Internet Gaming disorder. The results of chi square test showed that significantly more male students played games for social motives (p=.032), whereas significantly more female students played games for coping motives (p=.001). Pearson correlation results showed a significant positive correlation between time spent on gaming and internet gaming disorder (p=.000) and between internet gaming disorder with recreation as a motive (p=.027). CONCLUSIONS: Internet Gaming is getting common in our setup and IGDS-SF9 can be effectively used in our population because of its reliability.
