AUTHOR=Jazaiery Mahta , Rezaeifar Kosar , Sayyah Mehdi , Cheraghi Maria 

TITLE=Relationship Between Mental Health and Death Anxiety During COVID-19 Pandemic in Dental Staff and Students: A Cross-Sectional Study

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychiatry

VOLUME=Volume 13 - 2022

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2022.849868

DOI=10.3389/fpsyt.2022.849868

ISSN=1664-0640

ABSTRACT=We aimed to determine the mental health and death anxiety among personnel (staff and faculty members) and students in school of dentistry during COVID-19 crisis. Methods: It was a cross-sectional study among students (n = 300) and staff(n = 60) in School of dentistry in Ahvaz University of Medical Sciences during 2020. The instruments was a demographic questionnaire, Death Anxiety Scale, and Kessler Questionnaire. Data was analyze by using SPSS version 22, In all tests, the significance level was set at less than 0.05. Results: The mean age of dental students and personnel was 23.96 and 40.08 years, respectively. The mean scores of death anxiety were higher in personnel (8.53) than students (6.02) and the mean scores of mental health status were higher in students (14.78) than personnel (9.18). This indicates that death anxiety was higher in personnel, while students were in better mental health status. The correlation coefficient between death anxiety and mental health status was 0.366 among students (P <0.001), while it was -0.49 among personnel (P <0.001), showing a strong relationship between death anxiety and mental health in both groups. Conclusion: The overall findings represent a significant but contradictory relationship between mental health status and death anxiety among dental personnel and students during the prevalence of COVID-19 pandemic. This suggests the impact of confounding factors in this area, which can be studied by future researchers and policy makers to design health promotion interventions.