The impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of healthcare workers in Africa: A scoping review

Abstract

Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused a major impact on the mental health of healthcare workers, although there was no scoping review found that summarised the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of health care workers in Africa. A scopingreview method was used to search for relevant articles in English language on mental health symptoms of healthcare workers during the coronavirus pandemic in Africa. PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science and CINAHL were searched from January 2020 to September 2022. The search
generated 2696 studies, after deduplication, screening, exclusion and further search, ten studies were included. The following outcomes associated with the COVID-19 pandemic were identified: stress, burnout, anxiety/generalized anxiety disorder, depression, poor quality of sleep/insomnia, distress/post-traumatic stress disorder, coronavirus disease-related anxiety, functional impairment,
self-report on lived experiences working during the coronavirus outbreak, subjective perceptions of employer support, coping strategies/skills, and resilience. Most studies reported that anxiety and depression are triggered by the coronavirus pandemic among healthcare workers. We found variation in mental health symptoms according to gender, healthcare worker subgroups, years of work experience, and age, wherein females, doctors and nurses, healthcare workers with lesser years of experience, and those who were relatively younger in age had a higher chance of experiencing more mental health symptoms.