Knowledge of Prevention Measures and Information About Coronavirus in Romanian Male Patients with Severe Mental Illness and Severe Alcohol Use Disorder

Valentin Matei; Alexandru Pavel; Ana Giurgiuca; Alina Roșca; Arina Sofia; Irina Duțu; Cătălina Tudose

doi:10.2147/NDT.S278471

Knowledge of Prevention Measures and Information About Coronavirus in Romanian Male Patients with Severe Mental Illness and Severe Alcohol Use Disorder

Neuropsychiatr Dis Treat. 2020 Nov 26:16:2857-2864. doi: 10.2147/NDT.S278471. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Valentin Matei^{1

2}, Alexandru Pavel^{1

2}, Ana Giurgiuca^{1

2}, Alina Roșca^{1

2}, Arina Sofia^{1

2}, Irina Duțu^{1

2}, Cătălina Tudose^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Psychiatry Department, University of Medicine and Pharmacy "Carol Davila", Bucharest, Romania.
² 2nd Clinical Ward, "Prof. Dr. Alexandru Obregia" Psychiatric Hospital, Bucharest, Romania.

Abstract

Purpose: Patients with severe mental illness (SMI) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) are at higher risk for contracting coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) and for poor outcomes of COVID-19 infection. One reason for this could be the lack of knowledge regarding preventive measures against COVID-19 and the inability of the psychiatric patients to discern misinformation from facts.

Patients and methods: The study design was cross-sectional. We applied one questionnaire that evaluated knowledge of prevention measures and information about COVID-19 (comprised of two sections, each with five questions). The first section evaluated knowledge regarding the official WHO prevention measures against COVID-19, and the second consisted of false information about COVID-19 which examined the ability to identify misinformation about COVID-19. These questionnaires were applied face-to-face to psychiatric male inpatients from a tertiary psychiatric hospital in Bucharest diagnosed with SMI or severe alcohol disorder (SAUD) and to male controls from the community, matched by age and education. Mean scores of patients and controls were compared using Mann-Whitney test.

Results: There were 115 male psychiatric patients in total (65 SMI and 50 SAUD) and 57 controls included after the matching procedure. We found statistically significant lower (P<0.05) scores for psychiatric patients compared to controls regarding the prevention and general knowledge of COVID-19 (P<0.001), the WHO information about prevention measures (P=0.041), and the ability to identify misinformation about COVID-19 (P<0.001). The fact that psychiatric patients have less knowledge about prevention measures against COVID-19 and a reduced capacity to discern misinformation suggests that we need to identify new methods to convey correct information to these patients and also to better equip them to handle misinformation regarding COVID-19.

Conclusion: Patients with SMI and SAUD are less informed regarding COVID-19 infection and preventive measures compared to controls, while being prone to believing false information about COVID-19 as well.

Keywords: COVID-19; alcohol use disorder; coronavirus; severe mental illness.

Grants and funding

There was no funding involved in designing of the study.