Assessment of COVID-19 trauma responses. Who has been more traumatized during the pandemic?

To evaluate the effect of cognitive and sociodemographic characteristics of healthcare and non-healthcare workers on their traumatic responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Data were collected using an online survey between August-September 2020. The survey included the following scales: Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI), Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI), and Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R). Traumatic responses were categorized into three types: avoidance (IES-R_A), intrusion (IES-R_I), and hyperarousal (IES-R_H).

The study included a total of 672 participants, comprised of 399 (59.4%) men, and 273 (40.6%) women with a mean age of 39.25 ± 933 years. The results indicated that women had higher IES-R_I (r = .5.78, p < 0.001), IES-R_A (r = 4.47, p < 0.001), and IES-R_H (r = .5.20, p < 0.001) scores compared to men. Patients with a history of psychiatric diseases had significantly higher IES-R_I (r = -3.82, p < 0.001), IES-R_A (r = -2.00, p < 0.05), and IES-R_H (r = -4.06, p < 0.001) scores compared to patients with no history of psychiatric diseases. Non-healthcare workers had significantly higher IES-R_A (r = -2.69, p < 0.01) scores compared to healthcare workers.

Female gender and a positive history of psychiatric diseases were found to lead to an increase in the frequency of all three traumatic responses to COVID-19. Contrary to expectation, being a healthcare worker was not found as a factor facilitating trauma response formation in our study.