The Magnitude of Anxiety and Depressive Symptoms Among Tuberculosis Patients in Community Health Centers Setting During the Peak of COVID-19 Pandemic

BACKGROUND: Mental health problems can occur in patients with chronic diseases such as tuberculosis, and the stress of a pandemic exacerbates the condition. The study aims to explore the magnitude of anxiety and depressive symptoms in tuberculosis (TB) patients in community health centers (CHCs) settings during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: The study design was quantitative and cross-sectional. Subjects were TB patients who were recruited from TB services by doctors in CHCs. TB patients (n=74) were screened for anxiety and depressive symptoms over 4 months. Screening results are uploaded on a cloud-based digital platform and analyzed. Non-TB patients, as a comparison, were recruited and screened from the same cloud-based digital platform (n=245) during the same period. Analysis was carried out using Rasch modeling for data transformation. Data was analyzed then for frequency distribution for both groups and the logistic binaries to measure the burden of the mixed anxiety and depressive symptoms among the TB patient age’s sub-group. RESULTS: In both groups, there were 48.9% of mild, moderate, and severe categories of anxiety and 63.9% of depressive symptoms. In the TB-patients group, anxiety occurred at 48.7%, of which 23% were in the moderate and severe categories, compared to 13.4% for non-TB patients. Depressive symptoms were present in 71.6% of the TB patient group, of which 28.4% were in the moderate and severe categories, compared to 15.5% of non-TB patients. TB patients aged less than 20 years experienced moderate–severe anxiety with depressive symptoms simultaneously (mixed) as much as 16.3% or 4.6 times more than those aged over 20 years (p<0.05). CONCLUSION: Moderate and severe anxiety and depressive symptoms were shown higher in the TB patients’ group. Adolescents with TB are more susceptible to mental and emotional disorders.