Mental health of medical staff during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic: A systematic review and meta-analysis

OBJECTIVE: To quantify the prevalence of the adverse mental health outcomes in medical staff working in the hospital settings during the COVID-19 pandemic and explore the relative distribution of anxiety and depressive symptoms. METHODS: PubMed, EMBASE, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, WANFANG DATA, and VIP Database for Chinese Technical Periodicals, were searched for papers published from January 1, 2019 to April 19, 2020. The prevalence estimates of adverse mental health symptoms in medical staff were pooled using the random-effects model. RESULTS: A total of 35 articles and data of 25,343 medical staff were used in the final analysis. The pooled prevalence estimates in medical staff during the COVID-19 pandemic were as follows (ordered from high to low): fear-related symptoms 67% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 61%-73%), high levels of perceived stress 56% (95% CI: 32%-79%), anxiety symptoms 41% (95%CI: 35%-47%), insomnia 41% (95% CI: 33%-50%), post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms 38% (95% CI: 34%-43%), depressive symptoms 27% (95% CI: 20%-34%), and somatic symptoms 16% (95% CI: 3%-36%). The subgroup analysis revealed that the prevalence estimates of fear-related symptoms were consistently high. CONCLUSIONS: Medical staff during the COVID-19 epidemic have high prevalence of adverse mental health symptoms. Data-based strategies are needed to optimize mental health of medical staff and other health care professionals during times of high demand such as the COVID-19 and other epidemics.PROSPERO registration: CRD42020182433.