Prevalence and associated factors of the psychological impact of COVID-19 among communities, health care workers and patients in Ethiopia: A systematic review

INTRODUCTION: The mental health effects of coronavirus is found to be high in health care professionals, patients and communities. Therefore, this review tried to summarize the prevalence and associated factors of the psychological impact of COVID-19 among the health care workers (HCWs), patients and communities in Ethiopia. METHODS: The studies from Medline via PubMed, Science Direct, and Google Scholar were searched from February 17 to March 17, 2021. PRISMA-2020 (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses) was used to conduct this review. RESULT: Initially, 2190 publications were obtained from three databases (PubMed, Science Direct, and Google Scholar). Finally, 9 articles that fulfilled eligible criteria were included in the review. Among different types of mental health impacts stress was reported that lies in the range from 18% to 100%, anxiety was reported from 27.7% to 100%, depression was from 12.4% to 55.7%. Several factors were associated with negative psychological impacts of COVID-19 among health care workers, patients and communities such as level of education, occupation, gender, age, marital status, presence of co-morbidity, lack of social support, personal/family exposure, their attitude, income level, family size, presence of respiratory symptoms, substance use, area of residence, and lack of protective equipment. CONCLUSION: There was overall high psychological impact of COVID-19 pandemic among healthcare workers, communities, and patients. The most common indicators of psychological impact reported across studies were anxiety and stress. Therefore, online psychotherapy and cognitive behavioral and mindfulness-based therapies should be provided through smartphone applications to minimize psychological impacts of COVID-19.