Skip to main content
The Egyptian Journal of Neurology, Psychiatry and Neurosurgery
Download PDF

Depression among health workers caring for patients with COVID-19 in Egypt

The Egyptian Journal of Neurology, Psychiatry and Neurosurgery volume 57, Article number: 139 (2021) Cite this article

Abstract

Background

Health care workers caring for patients with COVID-19 pandemic are prone to extraordinary stressors and psychological problems. The aim of this study was to estimate the prevalence and risk factors of major depressive disorder among health care providers who are caring for patients with COVID-19.

Methods

Two hundred-seventy of health care workers were screened for depressive symptoms by DASS-21 Questionnaire. Only 152 of the participants accepted to be interviewed using SCID-I for diagnosis of major depressive disorder.

Results

According to DASS-21, 28.1% of HCWs had mild-to-moderate depressive symptoms, and 64.8% with severe symptoms. Of 152 who were interviewed using SCID-I, 74.3% were diagnosed with major depression disorder.

Young age, decreased sleep hours, female sex, past history of a psychiatric disease, fear of COVID-19 infection for themselves or their relatives, and fear of death with COVID-19 for themselves or their relatives were significant predictors for major depressive disorder and its severity.

Conclusion

Major depressive disorder is common among HCWs during COVID-19 pandemic. Screening for depression, particularly for young females, and early treatment are recommended.

Background

Lower respiratory tract infections are the communicable diseases with the high mortality rate around the world [1]. In December 2019, a highly infectious acute respiratory syndrome caused by a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in Wuhan, China. On March 11th 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic [2].

According to previous studies from SARS or Ebola epidemics, the onset of a sudden and immediately life-threatening illness may lead to extraordinary stressors on health care workers (HCWs) [3]. Increased workload, physical exhaustion, insufficient personal equipment, fear of infection, and the need to make ethically difficult decisions may have dramatic effects on their physical and mental well-being. Isolation, loss of social support and fear of transmission of infection to relatives and friends could make HCWs liable to mental health problems, such as fear, anxiety, insomnia and depression [4, 5]. Now in COVID-19 era, health care workers are first-line fighters treating patients with COVID-19 and they are exposed to long and distressing work shifts to meet health requirements which may exceed their individual coping skills [6].

Previous studies have reported the prevalence and factors associated with psychological outcomes in HCWs during past infectious disease outbreaks [7,8,9]. However, the impact of the current COVID-19 pandemic on the psychological well-being of medical staff is yet needed to be studied.

There are only few studies that evaluated depression and its risk factors among HCWs worldwide [10], but they used self-rating scales for assessment of depressive symptoms. The aim of the present research is to estimate the prevalence and potential risk factors contributing to major depressive disorder, which diagnosed by structural interview using SCID-I, among Egyptian health care workers who are caring for COVID-19 patients.

Methods

The data were collected during the period of March–September, 2020. The participants were the HCWs (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, technicians and paramedical workers) who were working in the isolation units for COVID-19 patients, at a university hospital in Egypt. Participants were selected using a convenience sampling technique. Inclusion criteria: age 18–60 years, both sexes and who accepted to participate. The sample size was calculated according the Epi Info 6.0, at 80% power of the study, 95% confidence level [11], with minimum sample size 260. We recruited 300 participants to overcome dropout.

The first step: An electronic Google form survey was sent to the participants via their E-mails (N = 300). It was designed by the authors to collect: 1—socio-demographic data (age, gender, marital status, residence, level of education, occupation and telephone number) and other clinical data; 2—data related to Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) for assessment of depressive symptoms. Prior to conducting the survey, the purpose of the study was explained to participants. Only 270 complete the survey and 30 gave incomplete response, so they were excluded.

The second step: All participants who complete the depression subscale of DASS-21 (N = 270) were invited for further evaluation by applying Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 disorders (SCID interview) for diagnosis of Major depressive disorder (MDD). The interviews were done in isolation units considering infection control by using the personal protective equipment PPE. Only 152 completed the SCID-I evaluation interview.

Measures

  1. A.

    The Depressive subscale of Depression anxiety stress scale (DASS-21): The Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-21) is a self-report tool containing 21 items that assess depression, anxiety, and stress. There are subscales with 7 items each (depression, anxiety and stress). Each item is scored on a 4-point Likert scale (0 = did not apply to me at all and 3 = applied to me very much, or most of the time), with a higher score indicating more severe levels of distress. The summation of each scale, then multiplied by two to convert to full scale scores. Each score ranged from 0 to 42. Participants with cutoff scores of ≥ 10 for the depression dimension (≥ 10 as “mild depression”, ≥ 14 as “moderate”, ≥ 21 as “severe”, and ≥ 28 as “extremely severe”), ≥ 8 in anxiety (≥ 8 as “mild anxiety”, ≥ 10 as “moderate”, ≥ 15 as “severe”, and ≥ 20 as “extremely severe”), and ≥ 15 in stress (≥ 15 as “mild anxiety”, ≥ 19 as “moderate”, ≥ 26 as “severe”, and ≥ 34 as “extremely severe”) were considered to have these disorders. The scale has been shown to have good test–retest reliability, internal consistency and convergent validity [12].

  2. B.

    Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-5 disorders, clinician version (SCID-5-CV). For diagnosis of Major depressive disorder [13]

Data analysis was performed using the statistical package for social sciences software (SPSS version 20). The qualitative data were presented in the form of number and percentage. The quantitative data were presented in the form of mean and standard deviation. Groups were compared using independent sample t test for quantitative parameters. For qualitative variables, chi-square was used as a test of significance of differences among groups. Linear and logistic regression was used in the analysis of the predictors for depression. A P-value < 0.05 was considered to indicate statistical significance.

Results

This study included 270 health care workers (HCWs). The studied group age ranged from 18 to 52 years with mean 34.98 ± 6.27 years. 57% of HCWs were female. More than 72% of them had post-graduate education. Most frequent occupations among the participants were physicians and nurses (70.7% and 16.3%, respectively). The most common specialties among physicians were clinical pathology, anesthesia, ICU and pulmonary (10.4%, 10% and 7%, respectively). Most of the HCWs were married (79.6%), from urban area (77.4%) and non-smokers (84.4%). Only 9.6% of the studied HCWs had past history of psychiatric disorders and 12.6% had family history of psychiatric disorders.

Among HCWs, 2.2% reported suicidal thoughts. The working hours ranged from 4 to 14 with mean 9.31 ± 3.1 while sleeping hours ranged from 3 to 10 with mean 6.57 ± 1.27. DASS-21 was answered by 270 of the participants (response rate: 90%). HCWs without depressive symptoms were 7% (N = 19), mild 13.3 (N = 36), moderate 14.8% (N = 40), severe 18.5% (N = 50) and extremely severe depressed HCWs represented 46.3% (N = 125) as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Frequency of depressive symptoms according to DASS-21 questionnaire among the HCWs

Full size image

Table 1 shows the comparison between HCWs with severe-to-extremely severe depression and those with mild-to-moderate depression. There was a statistical significant decrease in mean age and sleep hours among HCWs with severe and extremely severe depression. In addition, there was a statistical significant increase in frequency of severe and extremely severe depression among females, HCWs who had past history of psychiatric disorder, fear of working during COVID-19 pandemic, fear of being infected with COVID-19, fear of infection of a family member with COVID-19, fear of death with COVID-19 and fear of a family member death with COVID-19. The same factors remain significant after linear regression analysis for predictors of depression severity according to DASS-21 score as shown in Table 2.

Table 1 Comparison between those who are normal, mild and moderate depression and those with severe and extremely severe depression according to DASS-21 depression score
Full size table
Table 2 Linear regression analysis for predictors for severity of depression according to DASS-21 depression score among the studied group
Full size table

SCID-I evaluation was conducted on 152 HCWs who reported depression by DASS-21 scale and the evaluation revealed that 113 of them (74.3%) diagnosed with major depression (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2
figure 2

Diagram for the whole sample

Full size image

Depressed HCWs had statistically decreased mean age and decreased sleep hours than non-depressed. Moreover, frequency of depression was statistically increased among females, those who had a past history of psychiatric disorders, presence of fear of being infected with COVID-19, fear of infection of a family member with COVID-19, fear of death with COVID-19 and fear of a family member death with COVID-19 as shown in Table 3. The same factors remain significant after applying binary logistic regression analysis as shown in Table 4.

Table 3 Comparison between those who are not depressed versus those who are depressed according to SCID-1 evaluation
Full size table
Table 4 Binary logistic regression analysis for predictors of major depression disorder according to SCID-1 among the studied group
Full size table

Discussion

To our knowledge, this is the first research to use the structured clinical interview for DSM (SCID-I) to detect major depression disorder (MDD) among health care workers (HCWs) who were treating patients with COVID-19 in Egypt.

The current study was a cross-sectional survey that enrolled 270 HCWs and revealed a high prevalence of depressive disorder. Overall respondents, 251(93%) had depressive symptoms based on DASS-21. Twenty-eight percent of HCWs had mild-to-moderate depressive symptoms, and 65% with severe or extremely severe depressive symptoms. By applying SCID-I, 74.3% of HCWs were diagnosed with MDD. In a previous study during the acute SARS outbreak, 89% of HCWs who were in high-risk situations reported psychological symptoms [14]. An Egyptian study similarly reported a high prevalence of severe-to-extremely severe depressive symptoms among Egyptian physicians during the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority (63%) suffered from severe or extremely severe depressive symptoms [15]. Also, the prevalence of depressive symptoms among health care providers was (78.1%) in Jordan [16].

Two Egyptian studies and another Saudi one reported that severe depression represents 20.5%, 14%, 5.8%, consequently these results are considered low in comparison to the current one. This can be explained by the using of different measures noting the in this study the authors used the confirmatory diagnostic clinical interview according to the DSM [17,18,19].

Another Turkish study reported that 64.7% of physicians had symptoms of depression [20]. Many studies were performed in China: two of them reported that the prevalence of depressive symptoms among health care providers was 50.4% [21] and 56.0% [22].

The current results reported higher prevalence of depressive symptoms among HCWs than that of other studies, most probably due to the different conditions in which the HCWs are working in Egypt. HCWs did not deal with such a catastrophic and emerging pandemic before. Moreover, they are facing highly infectious disease with uncertain outcome with deficient infection control supplements and shortage of protective equipment that cause overburden and extraordinary stressors over them [22,23,24,25]. In addition, there are other factors that may explain the high prevalence of depression among HCWs generally such as workloads, burnout, insufficient time to take care of their families during the pandemic, social stigma, health anxiety and fear towards COVID-19 infection and reluctance of the society to support them [26,27,28,29,30].

The current study found that young age was associated with higher scores of depression among HCWs. This finding is supported by a recent Jordanian study conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, which demonstrated that the young age group of HCWs had a significantly high risk to develop depression [16]. A study in Saudi Arabia stated that the age group from 30 to 39 had a slightly high level of depression and anxiety [18]. This is also consistent with recent studies that demonstrate an elevated incidence of psychiatric disorders in younger adults [31, 32]. This could be attributed to the less adaptive manner of responding to stressors that may justify this result [33] and the age-related bio-psychosocial changes [31]. Moreover, young HCWs had to spend a long time in emergency units in close contact with COVID-19 patients to gain clinical experiences, causing a high level of stress and fear of acquiring the infection.

The results showed that fear of being infected with COVID-19 or transmitting the infection to family members, fear of death, or family members’ death with COVID-19, were associated with an increase in the severity of depression among HCWs. In line with these findings, recent studies in China and Nepal reported that medical staffs were fearful about transmitting the virus to their families [21, 23, 28]. A recent study reported that the most concerns regarding the COVID-19-related fears among medical staff in Egypt were the fear of being infected and the fear of transmission of the disease to their families [34]. HCWs may isolate themselves to lower the risk of infecting their family members. Thus the absence of emotional support could attribute the increased psychological distress and affect HCWs mental well-being [35].

The current study found that female HCWs were six times more likely to have depression than male HCWs. Similarly, the results of the Saudi, Jordanian and Egyptian studies indicate that being female increased the risk of depression among health care providers during the COVID-19 pandemic [16, 17, 36, 37]. HCWs with past history of psychiatric illness were seven times more likely to have depression than those without such history according to the current study. In line with this finding, other studies [23, 38] reported that health workers who had a history of medication for mental health problems had a higher risk to exhibit anxiety, depression, and insomnia symptoms compared with those who had no psychiatric history.

In addition, HCWs with decrease in sleep hours were two times more likely to have depression, but depression is associated with decrease in sleep hours and the cross-sectional design of this study cannot answer what started first?

Finally, HCWs who have fear of COVID-19 infection for themselves or relatives were four times more likely to have depression more than HCWs who did not have this fear. Fear of death for HCWs or their relatives double the risk of depression among HCWs. These findings are supported by previous studies [21, 23, 28].

According to these findings, the mental health status of HCWs should be closely monitored by the Ministry of Health to facilitate the appropriate psychological care. They should be provided with appropriate safety measures, their workload should be managed and they should be compensated by the appropriate financial support, to reduce the mental health burden during such pandemic. This study had some limitations which include: first, cross-sectional design does not investigate causality; second, only 56% of the sample size was interviewed using SCID-I, which might limit the strength of using a structural interview instead of self-rating scales. However, this study has some strengths: first, it used structural interview based on SCID-I in addition to self-rating scales; second, it includes many health professions not only physicians.

Conclusions

Three out of four HCWs who were caring for COVID-19 patients had major depression and two-thirds had severe symptoms. Young age, female gender, decreased sleep hours, past history of psychiatric illness, fear of infection or death due to COVID-19 were not only predictors of depression, but also of its severity. Screening for depression among HCWs, particularly for young females, and early treatment are recommended.

Availability of data and materials

Available upon request.

Abbreviations

SCID:

Structure Clinical Interview of DSM

HCWs:

Healthcare workers

MDD:

Major depression disorder

DASS:

Depression Anxiety Stress Scale

WHO:

World Health Organization

PPE:

Personal protective equipment

References

  1. Murdoch DR, Howie SR. The global burden of lower respiratory infections: making progress, but we need to do better. Lancet Infect Dis. 2018;18(11):1162–3.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Huang C, et al. Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China. Lancet. 2020;395(10223):497–506.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Liu X, et al. Depression after exposure to stressful events: lessons learned from the severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic. Compr Psychiatry. 2012;53(1):15–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Lung F-W, et al. Mental symptoms in different health professionals during the SARS attack: a follow-up study. Psychiatr Q. 2009;80(2):107.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Wu P, et al. The psychological impact of the SARS epidemic on hospital employees in China: exposure, risk perception, and altruistic acceptance of risk. Can J Psychiatry. 2009;54(5):302–11.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Fava GA, et al. Clinical characterization of allostatic overload. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 2019;108:94–101.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Bao Y, et al. 2019-nCoV epidemic: address mental health care to empower society. Lancet. 2020;395(10224):e37–8.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Chen Q, et al. Mental health care for medical staff in China during the COVID-19 outbreak. Lancet Psychiatry. 2020;7(4):e15–6.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Maunder RG, et al. Factors associated with the psychological impact of severe acute respiratory syndrome on nurses and other hospital workers in Toronto. Psychosom Med. 2004;66(6):938–42.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Pappa S, et al. Prevalence of depression, anxiety, and insomnia among healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Brain Behav Immunity. 2020;88:901–7.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Dean AG, et al. Epi Info: a word-processing, database, and statistics program for public health on IBM-compatible microcomputers programming. Atlanta: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Lovibond PF, Lovibond SH. The structure of negative emotional states: comparison of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS) with the Beck Depression and Anxiety Inventories. Behav Res Ther. 1995;33(3):335–43.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  13. First MB, et al. SCID-5-CV: structured clinical interview for DSM-5 disorders, clinician version. Arlington: American Psychiatric Association Publishing; 2016.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Chua SE, et al. Psychological effects of the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong on high-risk health care workers. Can J Psychiatry. 2004;49(6):391–3.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Khalaf OO, Khalil MA, Abdelmaksoud R. Coping with depression and anxiety in Egyptian physicians during COVID-19 pandemic. MECP. 2020;27(1):1–7.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Naser AY, et al. Mental health status of the general population, healthcare professionals, and university students during 2019 coronavirus disease outbreak in Jordan: a cross-sectional study. Brain Behav. 2020;10(8):e01730.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Ahmed GK, et al. Comparison of knowledge, attitude, socioeconomic burden, and mental health disorders of COVID-19 pandemic between general population and health care workers in Egypt. Egypt J Neurol Psychiatr Neurosurg. 2021;57(1):1–11.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. AlAteeq DA, et al. Mental health among healthcare providers during coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Saudi Arabia. J Infect Public Health. 2020;13(10):1432–7.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Aly HM, et al. Stress, anxiety and depression among healthcare workers facing COVID-19 pandemic in Egypt: a cross-sectional online-based study. BMJ Open. 2021;11(4):e045281.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Elbay RY, et al. Depression, anxiety, stress levels of physicians and associated factors in Covid-19 pandemics. Psychiatry Res. 2020;290:113130.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Lai J, et al. Factors associated with mental health outcomes among health care workers exposed to coronavirus disease 2019. JAMA Netw Open. 2020;3(3):e203976–e203976.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Xing L-q, et al. Anxiety and depression in frontline health care workers during the outbreak of Covid-19. Int J Soc Psychiatry. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020764020968119.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  23. Khanal P, et al. Mental health impacts among health workers during COVID-19 in a low resource setting: a cross-sectional survey from Nepal. Glob Health. 2020;16(1):1–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Li Q, et al. Early transmission dynamics in Wuhan, China, of novel coronavirus–infected pneumonia. N Engl J Med. 2020;382:1199–207.

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Rothe C, et al. Transmission of 2019-nCoV infection from an asymptomatic contact in Germany. N Engl J Med. 2020;382(10):970–1.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Abdelghani M, et al. Addressing the relationship between perceived fear of COVID-19 virus infection and emergence of burnout symptoms in a sample of Egyptian physicians during COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional study. MECP. 2020;27(1):70.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Chan-Yeung M. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and healthcare workers. Int J Occup Med Environ Health. 2004;10(4):421–7.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Chen W, Huang Y. To protect health care workers better, to save more lives with COVID-19. Anesth Analg. 2020. https://doi.org/10.1213/ANE.0000000000004834.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  29. Abdelghani M, Mahdy R, El-Gohari H. Health anxiety to COVID-19 virus infection and its relationship to quality of life in a sample of health care workers in Egypt: a cross-sectional study. Arch Psychiatry Psychother. 2021;23(1):19–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Urooj U, et al. Expectations, fears and perceptions of doctors during Covid-19 pandemic. Pak J Med Sci. 2020;36(COVID19-S4):S37.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Flint AJ, et al. Effect of age on the frequency of anxiety disorders in major depression with psychotic features. Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2010;18(5):404–12.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. Wells JE, et al. Prevalence, interference with life and severity of 12 month DSM-IV disorders in Te Rau Hinengaro: the New Zealand mental health survey. Aust N Z J Psychiatry. 2006;40(10):845–54.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Schilling OK, Diehl M. Psychological vulnerability to daily stressors in old age. Z Gerontol Geriatr. 2015;48(6):517–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Wahed WYA, et al. Assessment of knowledge, attitudes, and perception of health care workers regarding COVID-19, a cross-sectional study from Egypt. J Community Health. 2020;45(6):1242–51.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. QasemSurrati AM, AsadMansuri FM, AyadhAlihabi AA. Psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health care workers. J Taibah Univ Med Sci. 2020;15(6):536–43.

    Google Scholar 

  36. Alkhamees AA, et al. The psychological impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the general population of Saudi Arabia. Compr Psychiatry. 2020;102:152192.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Youssef N, et al. Mental health status of health-care professionals working in quarantine and non-quarantine Egyptian hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic. East Mediterr Health J. 2020;26:1155–64.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Zhu Z, et al. COVID-19 in Wuhan: sociodemographic characteristics and hospital support measures associated with the immediate psychological impact on healthcare workers. EClinicalMedicine. 2020;24:100443.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the participants for their valued time.

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Zagazig University, PO Box 44519, Zagazig, Egypt

    Hayam Mohamed Elgohary, Mohammad Gamal Sehlo, Medhat Mohamed Bassiony, Usama Mahmoud Youssef & Shimaa Ibrahim Amin

  2. Department of Community, Environmental and Occupational Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt

    Dina Sameh Elrafey

Authors
  1. Hayam Mohamed Elgohary
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Mohammad Gamal Sehlo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Medhat Mohamed Bassiony
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Usama Mahmoud Youssef
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Dina Sameh Elrafey
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Shimaa Ibrahim Amin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

HE: writing and editing. MS: interpretation and analysis of the data and writing. MB: work design. UY: collecting data and revision. DE: statistical analysis and writing. SA: data collection and writing. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mohammad Gamal Sehlo.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study was approved by Zagazig University institutional review board (IRB No. 6216). All study procedures were conducted within the ethical guidelines as outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. All participants signed a written consent.

Consent for publication

Not available.

Competing interests

There are no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Elgohary, H.M., Sehlo, M.G., Bassiony, M.M. et al. Depression among health workers caring for patients with COVID-19 in Egypt. Egypt J Neurol Psychiatry Neurosurg 57, 139 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41983-021-00394-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s41983-021-00394-1

Keywords

  • Major depression disorder
  • Healthcare workers
  • COVID-19 pandemic
  • Egypt