Prevalence of depression, anxiety, and psychological distress in patients with epilepsy during COVID-19: A systematic review.

Abstract Objective COVID-19 pandemic disease has profound consequences for physical and mental health. In this regard, health care for chronic diseases, especially epilepsy is neglected The purpose of this systematic review study is to investigate the epidemic effect of COVID-19 on increasing the prevalence of mental disorders such as depression, anxiety and sleep disorders in people with epilepsy (PWE). Methods We systematically searched MEDLINE, Cochrane, Embase, Web of science, Scopus, and Psych info databases for studies that estimate the prevalence of mental disorders in people with epilepsy during the COVID-19 until December 2020. Inclusion criteria included samples of population, with a confirmed diagnosis of epilepsy. Results whether PWE or people without epilepsy (PWOE), experienced stress and anxiety during COVID-19 pandemic. Most of the studies showed that PWE and even PWOE during the pandemic, suffer from depression. The highest rate of depression was attributed to female PWE with financial problems (66.7%) and the lowest rate of depression in PWE was reported in 8.6%. 7.1–71.2% and 28.2% of patients reported sleep disorders and insomnia respectively. Less than 2% experienced a sleep improvement. Limitations: due to a large amount of heterogeneities across the results, we could not evaluate the exact rate of prevalence in spite of using effective measures. Conclusions PWE were considered as a susceptible group to the impact of the pandemic. Therefore, it should be paid great attention to PWE and provided adequate psychological supports in this period to relieve or inhibit risks to mental health in PWE.