Mental Health and Psychosocial Function of General Population During the COVID‐19 Epidemic in China

Dear Editor, Since December 2019, COVID-19 caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged and rapidly spread to many countries.1,2 As of 10 April 2020, the number of confirmed cases in China3 has increased to 83 307 and confirmed cases in the world have increased to 1 439 516.4 The COVID-19 epidemic has resulted in serious threats to health and safety, as well as various psychological problems, such as high levels of perceived stress, insomnia, anxiety, and depression symptoms.5 Previous studies have reported that the medical workers experiencing tremendous pressure, from factors, such as high risk of infection, overwork, depression, and emotionally impacted by negative patients, and lack of protection for their families, have been shown to exhibit long-term psychological implications.6,7 This study utilized an online survey method to measure the incidence and severity of psychological disturbances in the general public. We conducted a cross-sectional study through an online survey from 23 February 2020 to 1 March 2020. Using the Questionnaire Star platform, we provided the QR code of the questionnaire survey online for general public nationwide. This investigation period corresponded to the decreasing period after the maximum point of COVID-19 outbreak in China, 2 months after the COVID-19 epidemic outbreak in Wuhan. All the subjects who participated in the survey had asked whether they would like to participate in the survey prior to their enrollment. The online survey includes questions about sociodemographic and clinical variables. In addition, Self-Reporting Questionnaire20 (SRQ-20), Athens Insomnia Scale (AIS), and Chinese version of the Perceived Stress Scale (CPSS) were used to evaluate the stress responses (i.e., ≥7 in SRQ-20), insomnia (i.e., ≥6 in AIS), and stress (i.e., ≥29 in CPSS). Among all the respondents, 784 were male (32.2%) and 1651 were female (67.8%). We did not observe any gender differences in the SRQ-20 and AIS scales. The perceived stress (CPSS score) was higher in the male than the female