COVID-19 Misinformation Impact on the Level of Anxiety and Depression among University Students

Abstract

Background: The global community faced a public health emergency in 2019 due to the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019  (COVID-19). This study aims to assess the level of COVID-19 misinformation and to determine its impact on the level of anxiety and  depression amongst university students.

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.

Conclusions: 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 in the medical and non-medical groups who had true information.