Evaluación de estrés, ansiedad y depresión en Ecuador durante la pandemia de COVID-19

Abstract

Introduction: The Pan American Health Organization established that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is experiencing a Mental Health crisis, that has caused fear, vulnerability, and confusion among individuals, by not knowing how to act toward it. Objective: Assess Ecuadorian’s mental health by evaluating stress, anxiety and depression levels, on August and September 2020. Method: It is an observational, descriptive and analytical, cross-sectional study. The study group were Ecuadorians from 20 to 64 years old, with 838 participants, obtained through a probabilistic sampling. The DASS-21 Psychological Test was applied, which measures stress, anxiety and depression levels, through a Likert-type subscale. Results: were obtained by using the spss program, a frequency analysis was performed to determine the following, on August 2020, 41% of Ecuadorians were affected, from these, 39% experience depression and 46% anxiety. Using a linear regression model, it was found that gender and age were contributing factors to show stress, depression and anxiety. In addition, the Chi2 test, stablished different stress levels, which are statistically significant between genders, in reference to depression and anxiety, the amount is not statistically significant between men and women. Conclusions: The psychological well-being of the Ecuadorians was affected by the challenges faced on the COVID-19 crisis, since a large percentage of Ecuadorian’s manifest a moderate to severe level of stress, anxiety, and depression.