Abstract
The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 as a deadly disease worldwide has caused widespread psychological problems as well as physical problems. Due to the importance of prevention and control of psychological problems in exposed individuals, the present study was conducted to investigate the perceived stress of medical and non-medical staff in the face of the epidemic of COVID-19 disease. 90.2% of the subjects had moderate job stress and 4.2% had severe stress. The level of stress in students was higher than formal and contract employees. Also, women had more stress than men, and people with medication, people without medication, and people with medical occupations more than non-medical occupations. Vulnerable groups in society, such as women, students, and healthcare workers, need more prevention and care in the COVID-19 crisis, which should be strengthened over time as effective coping strategies and disease epidemic management, access to medical resources, and mental health systems also plan national strategies and first aid in crises through telemedicine and online services.
TopIntroduction
In December 2019, pneumonia erupted following the release of Covid 19 in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, and subsequently attracted worldwide attention (Chan et al., 2020). From the beginning of the outbreak to mid-April 2020, the Global Assessment Website has identified 204,952 patients with Covid 19 in Iran, of which 9,623 have died from the virus. According to statistics, Iran ranks ninth in the world in terms of the number of deaths due to Covid 19 to mid-April (Parker, 2021). Covid-19 has been repeatedly described as a deadly virus (Sheahan et al., 2020). “Covid infections are mild in humans, but epidemics of the two beta-coronavirus (SARS Covid 19) cause severe respiratory syndrome, so much so that in the Middle East, Covid 19 acute respiratory syndrome occurs,” said Chalvin Huang, Quoting the World Health Organization. “There have been thousands of deaths in the last two decades.” Rapid transmission is a feature of such diseases and occurs as a result of close contact, pandemic or epidemic (Wang et al., 2020). The rapid rate of transmission and spread of the disease increases the vulnerability of people due to the fear of contracting the disease. Also, the ambiguous nature of the disease and its unfamiliarity, as well as the implementation of quarantine measures that have been strictly applied in some countries, such as China, caused a large number of people to be isolated and, consequently, many aspects of life were affected and caused Further increase in disease burden and widespread psychological problems such as panic disorder, anxiety and depression have been accompanied by physical problems (Wong et al., 2005). Stress and anxiety caused by the fear of being in the community cause people not to enter shopping centers, students not to enter educational centers and workers and tourists do not enter work and leisure institutions and as a result feel reduced independence and stress and worries about income and job security and Other cases have led to psychological problems, with governments in China, Singapore, and Australia expressing concern about the psychological side effects of Covid 19 and seeing the long-term effects of this isolation and fear in society as a serious threat to mental health (Wong et al., 2005).
Stress has long been considered as an important concept (Xiao et al., 2020). In fact, stress refers to the process of adaptation of a person when faced with internal and external challenges. It promotes psychological (anxiety, depression, memory loss, burnout) and pain disorders and is also associated with various physical health outcomes and diseases such as cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and asthma and rheumatoid arthritis (Qiu et al., 2020). Perceived stress is considered as a result of the interaction between the person and his environment (Rosmond, 2005). Of course, the biggest debate in measuring stress is whether we should limit ourselves to measuring visible external stressors (shocking and big life events or the sum of small events) or whether we should focus on personal stress reactions (Suryadevara et al., 2020).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Major Depressive Disorder: Major depressive disorder (MDD), also known simply as depression, is a mental disorder characterized by at least two weeks of pervasive low mood, low self-esteem, and loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities. Those affected may also occasionally have delusions or hallucinations. Introduced by a group of US clinicians in the mid-1970s, the term was adopted by the American Psychiatric Association for this symptom cluster under mood disorders in the 1980 version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) classification, and has become widely used since.
COVID-19: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The disease has since spread worldwide, leading to an ongoing pandemic.
Delusion: A delusion is a fixed belief that is not amenable to change in light of conflicting evidence. As a pathology, it is distinct from a belief based on false or incomplete information, confabulation, dogma, illusion, hallucination, or some other misleading effects of perception, as individuals with those beliefs are able to change or readjust their beliefs upon reviewing the evidence.
Stress: Stress, either physiological, biological, or psychological is an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition. Stress is the body's method of reacting to a condition such as a threat, challenge, or physical and psychological barrier. Stimuli that alter an organism's environment are responded to by multiple systems in the body. In humans and most mammals, the autonomic nervous system and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis are the two major systems that respond to stress.
Psychosomatic Medicine: Psychosomatic medicine is an interdisciplinary medical field exploring the relationships among social, psychological, and behavioral factors on bodily processes and quality of life in humans and animals. The academic forebear of the modern field of behavioral medicine and a part of the practice of consultation-liaison psychiatry, psychosomatic medicine integrates interdisciplinary evaluation and management involving diverse specialties including psychiatry, psychology, neurology, psychoanalysis, internal medicine, pediatrics, surgery, allergy, dermatology, and psychoneuroimmunology. Clinical situations where mental processes act as a major factor affecting medical outcomes are areas where psychosomatic medicine has competence.