Parental psychological distress associated with COVID-19 outbreak: A large-scale multicenter survey from Turkey

• Published in: International journal of social psychiatry Vol. 67; no. 6; pp. 696 - 704
• Main Authors: Bıkmazer, Alperen, Kadak, Muhammed Tayyib, Görmez, Vahdet, Doğan, Uğur, Aslankaya, Zeynep Dilara, Bakır, Fulya, Tarakçıoğlu, Mahmut Cem, Kaya, İlyas, Gümüş, Yusuf Yasin, Esin, İbrahim Selçuk, Karayağmurlu, Ali, Adak, İbrahim, Yaylacı, Ferhat, Güller, Barış, Tanır, Yaşar, Koyuncu, Zehra, Serdengeçti, Nihal, Ermiş, Çağatay, Kaçmaz, Gül Bilgin, Gülşen, Hatice, Doğru, Hicran, Bayati, Mohammed Al, Üstündağ, Büşra, Gökler, Enes, Özyurt, Gonca, Baykara, Burak, Ekinci, Özalp, Başgül, Şaziye Senem, Görmez, Aynur, Emiroğlu, Neslihan İnal, Türkçapar, Hakan, Öztürk, Mücahit
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01-09-2021; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Acquaintances; Adult; Child; Children; Communicable Disease Control; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Emotional distress; Health status; Humans; Medical personnel; Mental disorders; Mental health; Mothers; Occupational stress; Pandemics; Parents; Parents & parenting; Polls & surveys; Psychological Distress; Regression analysis; SARS-CoV-2; Stress, Psychological - epidemiology; Turkey - epidemiology; Turkey; parent; COVID 19; pandemic; children; mental health
• ISSN: 0020-7640; 1741-2854
• DOI: 10.1177/0020764020970240

Aims
Pandemics can cause substantial psychological distress; however, we do not know the impact of the COVID-19 related lockdown and mental health burden on the parents of school age children. We aimed to comparatively examine the COVID-19 related the stress and psychological burden of the parents with different occupational, locational, and mental health status related backgrounds.
Methods
A large-scale multicenter online survey was completed by the parents (n = 3,278) of children aged 6 to 18 years, parents with different occupational (health care workers—HCW [18.2%] vs. others), geographical (İstanbul [38.2%] vs. others), and psychiatric (child with a mental disorder [37.8%]) backgrounds.
Results
Multivariable logistic regression analysis showed that being a HCW parent (odds ratio 1.79, p < .001), a mother (odds ratio 1.67, p < .001), and a younger parent (odds ratio 0.98, p = .012); living with an adult with a chronic physical illness (odds ratio 1.38, p < .001), having an acquaintance diagnosed with COVID-19 (odds ratio 1.22, p = .043), positive psychiatric history (odds ratio 1.29, p < .001), and living with a child with moderate or high emotional distress (odds ratio 1.29, p < .001; vs. odds ratio 2.61, p < .001) were independently associated with significant parental distress.
Conclusions
Parents report significant psychological distress associated with COVID-19 pandemic and further research is needed to investigate its wider impact including on the whole family unit.