A study on psychological distress, functional impairment, and social attitude toward the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown among Indian population

Objective: The objective was to evaluate the prevalence of psychological distress, functional impairment, and social attitude toward the COVID-19 pandemic and induced lockdown among the Indian population. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 155 people residing in India. Data were collected on sociodemographic variables, psychological distress, functional impairment, and social attitude toward COVID-19 and the induced lockdown via an online survey. Kessler's K10 scale was used to measure psychological distress and Work and Social Adjustment Scale (WSAS) was used to evaluate functional impairment due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Descriptive statistic and Chi-square test were applied, where P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Pearson's analysis was used to measure the correlation between psychological distress and functional impairment. Results: Overall, the mean age of the study participants was 29.24 (standard deviation = 7.869) years. Majority of the study participants were female (63.9%). On applying K10 scale, it was found that 20% of the participants suffered from mild psychological distress and 16.1% were moderate-to-severely distressed. On applying WSAS scale, it was found that 23.9% of the study participants suffered from significant functional impairment and 7.9% from severe functional impairment. On assessing the social attitude, 63.9% of the participants purchased groceries from local market and 56.8% said that they would visit mall after the lockdown gets over. Eating out in a restaurant (P = 0.028) and visiting shopping mall (P = 0.032) after the lockdown gets over were significantly associated with psychological distress. Conclusion: Our findings identified the level of psychological distress, functional impairment, and social attitude toward the COVID-19 pandemic and the induced lockdown. Such evidences can be used to formulate interventions to improve the mental health and well-being of people during such emergencies.