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 the COVID-19 pandemic on anxiety depression and intention to go to the 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: Of all patients, 56.8% 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 participants 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 was an inverse correlation between the anxiety-depression levels and encountering COVID-19 patients and having a relative with COVID-19 (P = .001). Inverse correlation was found between intention to go to hospital and encountering COVID-19 patients (P = .001).

Conclusion: It was revealed that chronic patients did not have any intentions to go to hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic and only half of the people were willing to go to the hospital in case of emergency. Anxiety and depression levels were found to increase when COVID-19 patients were encountered or a relative had COVID-19.