Background: There is evidence of a high psychological toll from the COVID-19 pandemic in healthcare workers. This paper was aimed at conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies reporting levels of depression among healthcare workers during the COVID-19 and estimating the pooled prevalence of depression.
Methods: We searched for cross-sectional studies listed on PubMed from 1 December 2019 to 15 September 2020 that reported prevalence of depression in healthcare workers, nurses, medical doctors, and COVID-19 frontline professionals. The pooled proportions of depression were calculated with random effects models.
Results: We identified 57 studies from seventeen countries. The pooled prevalence of depression in healthcare workers was 24% (95% CI: 20-28%), 25% for nurses (95% CI: 18-33%), 24% for medical doctors (95% CI: 16-31%), and 43% for frontline professionals (95% CI: 28-59%).
Conclusions: The proportion of depression in nurses and medical doctors during the COVID-19 pandemic was similar to that found in the general population as previously reported in other meta-analyses conducted with smaller numbers of studies. Importantly, almost half of the frontline healthcare workers showed increased levels of depression. There is need for a comprehensive, international response to prevent and treat common mental health problems in healthcare workers.
Keywords: COVID-19; depressive symptoms; frontline; medical doctors; nurses; pooled prevalence.