315213

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

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Last updated: 01 Jan 2025

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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.

DOI

10.21608/zumj.2023.230023.2850

Keywords

COVID-19, Misinformation, Sources, depression, Medical students

Authors

First Name

Mona

Last Name

Hefny

MiddleName

A.

Affiliation

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

Email

monahefni20@gmail.com

City

-

Orcid

-

First Name

Mohamed

Last Name

Foda

MiddleName

A.

Affiliation

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

Email

adelfoda_1949@hotmail.com

City

Zagazig

Orcid

-

First Name

Ghada

Last Name

Salem

MiddleName

M.

Affiliation

Community and public health department faculty of medicine. Zagazig university

Email

gadamaged2@gmail.com

City

Zagazig

Orcid

-

First Name

Hebatallah

Last Name

Fawzy

MiddleName

M

Affiliation

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

Email

heba.magdy.fawzy87@gmail.com

City

Zagazig

Orcid

-

Volume

30

Article Issue

1.3

Related Issue

47218

Issue Date

2024-04-01

Receive Date

2023-08-17

Publish Date

2024-04-01

Page Start

366

Page End

377

Print ISSN

1110-1431

Online ISSN

2357-0717

Link

https://zumj.journals.ekb.eg/article_315213.html

Detail API

https://zumj.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=315213

Order

315,213

Type

Original Article

Type Code

273

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Zagazig University Medical Journal

Publication Link

https://zumj.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

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

Details

Type

Article

Created At

30 Dec 2024