A Cross-Sectional Online Survey Of Relationship Between The Psychological Impacts Of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) Lockdown And The Resilience Among Physiotherapy Professionals In India

Introduction: Novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused a rapidly evolving confused state. Like other front line health care workers (HCWs), physiotherapists are also providing their valuable services to COVID-19 patients. Caring COVID-19 patients is exhaustive both physically and mentally due to associated risks. So physiotherapists are prone to development of psychological problems like depression and anxiety during COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown. Main objective of study was to assess relationship between psychological impact of COVID-19 lockdown in the form of depression and anxiety, and the resilience among physiotherapists across India. Methods: Present cross-sectional online survey was conducted in the rural tertiary health-care center from Maharashtra, India, with sample size was 378. Data were recorded with consecutive sampling method from study participants on socio-demographic details, Beck's Depression Inventory (BDI), Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7 item (GAD - 7) scale and Brief Resilience Scale (BRS). After the collection, data were analyzed using version 15.0 of SPSS software, Chi-square test, Fisher's exact test and Pearson's correlation test. Results: Prevalence of depression and anxiety among study participants were 31% and 37.8% respectively. As regards depression, 56 (14.8%) had mild, 23 (6.1%) had borderline, 29 (7.7%) had moderate, 8 (2.1%) had severe and 1 (0.3%) had extreme depression. As regards anxiety, 96 (25.4%) had mild, 32 (8.5%) had moderate and 15 (3.9%) had severe anxiety. As regards resilience level, 86 (22.8%) had low, 281 (74.3%) had normal and 11 (2.9%) had high resilience. Those respondents who had high resilience had lower rates of depression on BDI and lower rates of anxiety on GAD-7. Conclusion: Programs to strengthen resilience should be priority. In longer run, increasing resilience of physiotherapists can have mental health promoting value during the stressful event of COVID-19 lockdown.