Mental Health Disorders During COVID-19 Pandemic Among Southwest Ethiopia University Students: An Institutional-Based Cross-Sectional Study.

Introduction: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak originated in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, at the end of 2019. The COVID-19 incidence of new cases and fatality has continued to fast-track. The mental state and well-being of entire societies are severely suffering from this crisis and are a precedence to be immediately addressed.

Objective: To assess mental health disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic among university students, Southwest, Ethiopia, 2020/2021.

Method: Institutional-based cross-sectional study was conducted. Pretested self-administered a structured questionnaire was used. Depression, anxiety, and stress were measured by depression, anxiety, stress Scale-21 (DASS-21). Data were arrived by Epi Data version 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 25 for analysis. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were applied. In multivariate logistic regression; p -value < .05 at 95% CI was declared as significant.

Results: Seven hundred ten university students with 95.6% of the response rate participated in the study. Of the participants, 91.3% were between the ages of 18 and 24 years, and 57.2% were male. The magnitude of anxiety, depression, and stress was 35.1%, 30.0%, and 38.2%, respectively.In this study, age ≥ 25years, easy access to handwashing facilities, relative death due to COVID-19, wearing a face mask, a program of education, marital status, worried about academic activities, and family psychiatric history were predictors for mental health disorders and insomnia was a predictor of both anxiety and depression during COVID-19 pandemic.

Conclusion: In this study, the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and stress was above one-third, which was higher than the previous studies done in the country. Therefore, the continuing increase in new cases of disease infectivity and fatality throughout the country, providing psychological counseling, and developing coping strategies to predictors are important to prevent mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.