Abstract:
Background – The COVID19 pandemic is believed to have caused massive psychosocial challenges in low-income countries. Pregnant women bear more burden because of their circumstance and fear of the effect of COVID 19 on them and their offspring. Thus, it was imperative to study the psychological effects of the disease.
Objective - To assess anxiety and associated factors in pregnant women visiting ANC during the pandemic of COVID 19 at public health centers of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Method- This was an institutional based cross-sectional study. Pregnant women who come for ANC follow up in a randomly selected health centers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, were recruited for the study sequentially until the sample size was achieved during the study period, Data were collected from 323 pregnant women by using a standard structured questionnaire. SPSS version 20 was used for data analysis. Multiple variable logistic regression was used to identify associated factors.
Result: A total of 323 pregnant women were recruited from the ANC clinics of public health centers of Addis Ababa and assessed for anxiety and associated factors. The overall prevalence of anxiety was 12.70%, 95% CI (9.00% -16.10%). We observed only wanted pregnancy (AOR 0.20, 95%CI (0.05-0.80)), and moderate and high wealth status (AOR 0.27, 95%CI (0.12-0.65)) to be positively associated and alcohol use (AOR 3.10, 95%CI (1.22-7.87)) to be negatively associated with anxiety in the final multivariate analysis.
Conclusion and recommendation: Anxiety in pregnant women is prevalent. Considering the adverse obstetric, maternal and newborn outcomes associated with anxiety during pregnancy integrating mental health assessment and services in the standard ANC is highly recommended..................... Thesis available at ACIPH Library