Psychosocial and Behavioral Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic in the Indian Population: Protocol for a Cross-sectional Study

BACKGROUND: During the year 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic spread from China to the rest of the world, which prompted the world to implement a widespread mandated quarantine or social isolation. The impending uncertainty of the pandemic must have resulted in a variety of widespread mental health maladies. There has been documentation in the literature about a lot of these in small populations of the world but limited studies have been conducted in India, leading to limited evidence in the literature. OBJECTIVE: The main objective of our study is to investigate the mental health effects that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the general population in India both quantitatively and qualitatively. These results will help contribute to reducing the knowledge gap that is recognized in the literature, which is the result of the unprecedented and novel nature of the pandemic. METHODS: We designed and validated our own questionnaire and used the method of circulating the questionnaire via WhatsApp (Facebook Inc). WhatsApp is a social media app that is very popularly used in India; hence, it turned out to be an effective medium for gathering pilot data. We analyzed the pilot data and used them to validate the questionnaire. This was done with the expertise of our mentor, Nilima Shah, MD (psychiatry). We gathered pilot data on 545 subjects and used the results to determine the changes that were needed for the questionnaire while simultaneously validating the questionnaire. RESULTS: The study protocol was approved in September 2020 by the institutional review board at Vadilal Sarabhai General Hospital, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. CONCLUSIONS: The following preliminary assumptions can be made about the study based on the pilot data: the majority of the survey respondents were male (289/545, 53%), most of them were educated and employed as health care workers (199/545, 36.5%). The majority of the responders were self-employed (185/545, 33.9%), single (297/545, 54.5%), and stayed with their families (427/541, 79%) for the lockdown, which helped them psychologically. Findings that are specific to mental health have been elaborated upon in the manuscript. It is evident from the data collected in previous literature that the pandemic has had significant detrimental effects on the mental health of a vast proportion of the Indian population. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/29896