Effect of COVID-19 Pandemic on Anxiety Depression And Intention To Go To Hospital in Chronic Patients

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on anxiety depression and intention to go to hospital in chronic patients. METHODS: The Bostan Intention to Go to Hospital Scale developed by one researcher (SB) as the data collection tool and the Beck Anxiety-Depression Inventories were used. RESULTS: 56.8% of the patients stated that they would go to the hospital in case of emergency and 28.3% expressed that they did not want to go to the hospital even in this case. 50% of the patients said that they did not want to go to the hospital under any circumstances during the pandemic process. As a result of the correlation analysis, there were inverse correlation between the anxiety-depression levels and encountering COVID patient and having a relative with COVID(p=0.001). Inverse correlation was found between intention to go to hospital and encountering COVID patient(p=0.001). CONCLUSION: It was revealed that chronic patients did not have any intentions to go to hospital during the COVID-19 pandemia and only half of people were willing to go to hospital in case of emergency. Anxiety and depression levels were found to increase when COVID patient was encountered or a relative had COVID.