Introduction The global devastating effect of COVID-19 has caused anxiety and fear to variable extent among the public. We aimed to evaluate the knowledge, attitude, socioeconomic burden, and the mental health problems regarding anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder during COVID-19 on the general population and HCWs in Egypt. Methods This study was conducted using a semi-structured online questionnaire in May 2020. Data on demographic features, socioeconomic scale, knowledge, and attitude regarding COVID-19 and the effect on different aspects of life were collected. Assessment was done using Arabic versions of Beck’s Anxiety Inventory, Beck’s Depression Inventory–II , and Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale. We divided participants into non-health care workers (non-HCWs) and HCWs groups. Results There were 524 participants who responded to the survey from 23 governorates. More than half of the participants were females (57.4%), middle age (53%), and middle socioeconomic class (66.6%). Non-HCWs were 402 and HCWs were 122. Most participants had good knowledge about the disease and a positive attitude toward protective measures particularly in HCWs. COVID-19 showed negative impact on different aspects of participants’ life. HCWs had higher frequency of anxiety (32%) and OCD (29%) than non-HCWs (30% and 28%, respectively) while non-HCWs had higher depression (69%) than HCWs (66.4%). HCWs had higher rates of severe depression (20.5%) with moderate and severe OCD (4.9%, 1.6% respectively) than non-HCWs. Female gender, young age, urban residence, students, smoking, history of medical illness, and low socioeconomic class were significant associated factors. Conclusions Health care workers had good knowledge about COVID-19 and a positive attitude toward the protective measures relative to non-HCWs. COVID-19 had a negative impact on different aspects of life and had a major association with the anxiety, depression, and OCD in both groups. Health professionals are more likely to have these psychological consequences. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41983-021-00280-w.
【저자키워드】 COVID-19, Anxiety, Depression, mental health, Egypt, obsessive compulsive, 【초록키워드】 Health care, OCD, knowledge, Gender, smoking, Consequences, Features, HCWs, female, Factors, age, Psychological, General population, scale, assessment, Care, moderate, questionnaire, Protective, association, Frequency, HCW, Obsessive-compulsive disorder, supplementary material, positive attitude, measure, participant, professional, MOST, Arabic, inventory, severe depression, Result, collected, evaluate, caused, the disease, conducted, medical illness, groups, was done, in both groups, mental health problem, 【제목키워드】 knowledge, COVID-19 pandemic, Health care worker, General population, Mental health disorder,