COVID-19 Misinformation impact on the level of Anxiety and Depression among University Students

Hefny, Mona A.; Foda, Mohamed A.; Salem, Ghada M.; Fawzy, Hebatallah M

doi:10.21608/zumj.2023.230023.2850

COVID-19 Misinformation impact on the level of Anxiety and Depression among University Students

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Zagazig University, Zagazig, Egypt

² Community and public health department faculty of medicine. Zagazig university

10.21608/zumj.2023.230023.2850

Abstract

Background: The global community faced a public health emergency in 2019 due to the spread of the coronavirus disease2019(COVID-19).

Objectives: To assess the level of COVID-19 misinformation and to determine its impact on the level of anxiety and depression amongst university students .

Subjects & Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed on 358 undergraduate university students, using an Arabic-structured self-administrated questionnaire.

Results: We found that 20.4% of students had misinformation about COVID-19, while 30.2% had misinformation about COVID-19 vaccination. As for the sources of information, social media, family and friends and online news took the highest percentage by 86% ,84.9% and 83.2% respectively. 35.8% of students suffered a moderate degree of anxiety, nearly one quarter suffered from a severe degree of anxiety, 33.5% of the studied students experienced moderately severe depression, and moderate depression was detected among 20.9% of them. There was also a significant difference between medical and non-medical groups who had true information about COVID-19 and its vaccination regarding levels of anxiety and depression.

Conclusion: Misinformation was primarily communicated amongst medical as well as non-medical students via social media. There was a significant difference in the degrees of anxiety and depression between those with true information and those with misinformation, and also in the medical and non-medical groups who had true information.

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