Prevalence of psychological symptoms among Ebola survivors and healthcare workers during the 2014–2015 Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone: a cross-sectional study
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// Dong Ji 1, 2, * , Ying-Jie Ji 1, 2, * , Xue-Zhang Duan 1, 2 , Wen-Gang Li 1, 2 , Zhi-Qiang Sun 1, 2 , Xue-Ai Song 1, 2 , Yu-Hua Meng 1, 2 , Hong-Mei Tang 1, 2 , Fang Chu 1, 2 , Xiao-Xia Niu 1 , Guo-Feng Chen 1 , Jin Li 1, 2 , Hui-Juan Duan 1, 2 1 302 Military Hospital of China, Beijing, China 2 Sierra Leone-China Friendship Hospital, Freetown, Sierra Leone * These authors contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Hui-Juan Duan, email: duane8699@sina.com Jin Li, email: lijin20130605@163.com Keywords: ebola virus disease, psychological symptoms, SCL-90-R, emerging infectious disease, emergency response plan Received: July 20, 2016 Accepted: December 12, 2016 Published: January 04, 2017 ABSTRACT The 2014–2015 Ebola epidemic was considered to be the largest and most complex outbreak, which caused 11,310 reported deaths. The epidemic disease can cause a mental health crisis, however, there is only a small amount of scientific literature available related to this health issue so far. We evaluated the psychological symptoms of 161 participants including Ebola survivors and healthcare workers in Sierra Leone, analyzed the impact of job classification, education level on psychological status. We found that the order of total general severity index (GSI) scores from high to low was EVD survivors, SL medical staff, SL logistic staff, SL medical students, and Chinese medical staff. There were 5 dimensions (obsession-compulsion, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, and paranoid ideation) extremely high in EVD survivors. GSI were associated with university education negatively. We believed our information is necessary to develop the comprehensive emergency response plan for emerging infectious disease outbreak.
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The current findings are consistent with previous studies that exposing public health emergency can cause public mental health problems, such as Wenchuan and Lushan earthquakes, 2014 Ebola Outbreak, and SARS.
“These findings are consistent with the previous studies’ that exposing public health emergency can cause public mental health problems, such as Wenchuan and Lushan earthquakes[17], 2014 Ebola Outbreak[7,18], and SARS[19].”
From Mental health problems and social media exposure during COVID-19 outbreak (2020) · cites this paper as [18]
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- Authors
- Ji, D., Ji, Y.-J., Duan, X.-Z., Li, W.-G., Sun, Z.-Q., Song, X.-A., Meng, Y.-H., Tang, H.-M., Chu, F., Niu, X.-X., Chen, G.-F., Li, J., & Duan, H.-J.
- Affiliations
- 302 Military Hospital of China (CN)
- 302 Military Hospital of China, Beijing, China
- Corresponding author
- Ji, Dong
- Venue
- Oncotarget
- Publisher
- Impact Journals, LLC
- Published
- 2017-01-10
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 12784-12791
- ISSN
- 1949-2553 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5355054
- OpenAlex
- W2567841985
- Cited by
- 257
- References
- 34
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 63 · 2021: 82 · 2020: 63 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 4 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 23.74
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Oncotarget (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › COVID-19 and Mental Health
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Infectious Diseases › Viral Infections and Outbreaks Research
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research
- Keywords
- Ebola virus disease, psychological symptoms, post-traumatic stress, Ebola survivors, healthcare workers, 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak, Sierra Leone, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, anxiety, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, educational attainment, emergency planning, emerging infectious diseases
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Mental Disorders, Child, Cross-Sectional Studies, Disease Outbreaks, Female, Health Personnel, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Neuropsychological Tests, Sierra Leone, Prevalence, Survivors, Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola, Young Adult
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