Psychological Burden of Long COVID and Associated Factors Among Nurses Two Years Post-infection: A Cross-Sectional Study, 2025, Zhang et al.

[Chandelier]

Psychological Burden of Long COVID and Associated Factors Among Nurses Two Years Post-infection: A Cross-Sectional Study

Spoiler: Authors

Zhang, Lin; Li, Liang; Chen, Junyi; Pang, Suhua; Zhang, Zhenjiang; Yan, Youde

Abstract​

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has generated sustained physical and psychological impacts on healthcare workers.
Growing evidence suggests that some individuals develop persistent multisystem manifestations long after the acute phase, collectively referred to as long COVID.
Nurses, who have borne heavy workloads and ongoing psychological stress since the pandemic, may be particularly vulnerable; however, limited research has examined their mental health status two years after infection.

Aims: This study aimed to evaluate anxiety and depression levels among nurses two years after COVID-19 infection, compare psychological characteristics across clinical departments, and identify factors associated with long COVID.

Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted among nurses at a tertiary hospital, yielding 735 valid responses.
Data were collected using a general information questionnaire, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), and the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9).
Participants were categorized into long COVID (n = 263) and non-long COVID (n = 472) groups.
Between-group differences were examined using appropriate parametric or non-parametric tests, and variables with P < 0.10 were entered into multivariable logistic regression to identify independent predictors.

Results: Nurses with long COVID were significantly older and exhibited higher GAD-7 and PHQ-9 scores than those without long COVID (all P < 0.001).
Multivariate analysis showed that higher PHQ-9 scores (odds ratio (OR) = 1.147, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.108-1.188) and older age (OR = 1.040, 95% CI: 1.011-1.070) were independently associated risk factors for long COVID.
Although the prevalence of long COVID did not differ significantly across departments (P = 0.378), anxiety and depression levels varied, with nurses in high-risk exposure departments reporting higher GAD-7 and PHQ-9 scores than those in outpatient and medical-technical departments.

Conclusion: Two years after infection, nurses with long COVID continue to experience substantial psychological burden, particularly among older individuals and those with more severe depressive symptoms.
Although long COVID was evenly distributed across clinical departments, significant interdepartmental differences in anxiety and depression underscore the influence of work characteristics and environment.
Targeted psychological support and ongoing mental health monitoring are warranted to promote recovery and enhance occupational resilience in the post-pandemic era.

Web | DOI | Cureus

 

[Ash]

Psychological Burden of Long COVID and Associated Factors Among Nurses Two Years Post-infection: A Cross-Sectional Study

Spoiler: Authors

Zhang, Lin; Li, Liang; Chen, Junyi; Pang, Suhua; Zhang, Zhenjiang; Yan, Youde

Abstract​

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has generated sustained physical and psychological impacts on healthcare workers.
Growing evidence suggests that some individuals develop persistent multisystem manifestations long after the acute phase, collectively referred to as long COVID.
Nurses, who have borne heavy workloads and ongoing psychological stress since the pandemic, may be particularly vulnerable; however, limited research has examined their mental health status two years after infection.

Aims: This study aimed to evaluate anxiety and depression levels among nurses two years after COVID-19 infection, compare psychological characteristics across clinical departments, and identify factors associated with long COVID.

Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted among nurses at a tertiary hospital, yielding 735 valid responses.
Data were collected using a general information questionnaire, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), and the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9).
Participants were categorized into long COVID (n = 263) and non-long COVID (n = 472) groups.
Between-group differences were examined using appropriate parametric or non-parametric tests, and variables with P < 0.10 were entered into multivariable logistic regression to identify independent predictors.

Results: Nurses with long COVID were significantly older and exhibited higher GAD-7 and PHQ-9 scores than those without long COVID (all P < 0.001).
Multivariate analysis showed that higher PHQ-9 scores (odds ratio (OR) = 1.147, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.108-1.188) and older age (OR = 1.040, 95% CI: 1.011-1.070) were independently associated risk factors for long COVID.
Although the prevalence of long COVID did not differ significantly across departments (P = 0.378), anxiety and depression levels varied, with nurses in high-risk exposure departments reporting higher GAD-7 and PHQ-9 scores than those in outpatient and medical-technical departments.

Conclusion: Two years after infection, nurses with long COVID continue to experience substantial psychological burden, particularly among older individuals and those with more severe depressive symptoms.
Although long COVID was evenly distributed across clinical departments, significant interdepartmental differences in anxiety and depression underscore the influence of work characteristics and environment.
Targeted psychological support and ongoing mental health monitoring are warranted to promote recovery and enhance occupational resilience in the post-pandemic era.

Web | DOI | Cureu

Or....

They principally require medical treatment for the harms done to their bodies, in an attempt to arrest the damage if possible or maintain life as long as possible.

post-pandemic era.

Why trust a researcher who fails on the fundamentals.

 

[Utsikt]

Data were collected using a general information questionnaire, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), and the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9).

Yet another case of researchers being completely clueless about what their data actually means.

I guess they also try to pay their bills with monopoly money, because the numbers on the bills clearly say they are worth something!

 

[rvallee]

This, uh, 'study' is as perfect as it gets to emphasize how biopsychosocial everything needs to be shut down entirely. It serves absolutely no purpose, to the point of being comically incompetent. It's become a top 5 most harmful ideology in human history, especially because it's made to look so inoffensive. There are zero guardrails against it, there is literally a Trojan horse parking lot!

It's been 6 years. We know for a fact that the necessary condition for LC is a COVID infection. Everything else has turned up total bust. Despite there being more efforts (by volume, not mass) to find them. But still there are academics who completely ignore this, pretend like no one has ever thought of that before and that you can research an illness like this in a complete intellectual and factual vacuum.

They explicitly ask questions where the answers overlap with being ill, but is framed as mental illness. It makes no sense other than in pushing a very biased agenda. They even repeat themselves in ways that frankly make me wonder if they even read what they write:

Conclusion: Two years after infection, nurses with long COVID continue to experience substantial psychological burden, particularly among older individuals and those with more severe depressive symptoms.

Look at this crap. Their assessment of 'depressive symptoms' is literally asking about psychological burden, mixed in with some symptoms and the common consequences of illness.

Multivariate analysis showed that higher PHQ-9 scores (odds ratio (OR) = 1.147, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.108-1.188) and older age (OR = 1.040, 95% CI: 1.011-1.070) were independently associated risk factors for long COVID.

You are literally asking the same thing! The same thing is not a risk factor for itself, it's itself! You're just asking the wrong questions and making invalid conclusions. What happens after cannot be the root cause. It. Happens. After. There are entire branches of philosophy that deal with flawed reasoning like this and this analysis would fail an intro class.

And that's before you get to the fact that even if this were true and accurate, they couldn't do anything about it. Because the expertise to do something about this literally does not exist. It's a complete fantasy.

Frankly, this is basically pro-infection propaganda. It serves to whitewash the actual cause of this enormous social problem, infections, and instead re-attribute the blame elsewhere, where it doesn't actually apply, privatizing the social problem with fake solutions to made-up problems. This way, we now have two problems: infections are promoted as healthy and good, while solutions are indefinitely blocked as the problem is made significantly worse.

People in the profession can whine all they want about the likes of RFK Jr., but this, here, is every bit as bad as he is. It's doing the exact same thing. He has decided that vaccines are the cause of whatever and exercise and scarfing down animal fat is the solution. They have decided that infections don't matter in a post-infectious illness, and that the solution is the problem itself: push yourself, exercise, ignore your symptoms!

They're not even similar. They're basically identical. This pseudoscience needs to be shut down entirely, it will literally never achieve anything other than harm people. It never has, never will.

 

[bobbler]

Psychological Burden of Long COVID and Associated Factors Among Nurses Two Years Post-infection: A Cross-Sectional Study

Spoiler: Authors

Zhang, Lin; Li, Liang; Chen, Junyi; Pang, Suhua; Zhang, Zhenjiang; Yan, Youde

Abstract​

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has generated sustained physical and psychological impacts on healthcare workers.
Growing evidence suggests that some individuals develop persistent multisystem manifestations long after the acute phase, collectively referred to as long COVID.
Nurses, who have borne heavy workloads and ongoing psychological stress since the pandemic, may be particularly vulnerable; however, limited research has examined their mental health status two years after infection.

Aims: This study aimed to evaluate anxiety and depression levels among nurses two years after COVID-19 infection, compare psychological characteristics across clinical departments, and identify factors associated with long COVID.

Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was conducted among nurses at a tertiary hospital, yielding 735 valid responses.
Data were collected using a general information questionnaire, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), and the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9).
Participants were categorized into long COVID (n = 263) and non-long COVID (n = 472) groups.
Between-group differences were examined using appropriate parametric or non-parametric tests, and variables with P < 0.10 were entered into multivariable logistic regression to identify independent predictors.

Results: Nurses with long COVID were significantly older and exhibited higher GAD-7 and PHQ-9 scores than those without long COVID (all P < 0.001).
Multivariate analysis showed that higher PHQ-9 scores (odds ratio (OR) = 1.147, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.108-1.188) and older age (OR = 1.040, 95% CI: 1.011-1.070) were independently associated risk factors for long COVID.
Although the prevalence of long COVID did not differ significantly across departments (P = 0.378), anxiety and depression levels varied, with nurses in high-risk exposure departments reporting higher GAD-7 and PHQ-9 scores than those in outpatient and medical-technical departments.

Conclusion: Two years after infection, nurses with long COVID continue to experience substantial psychological burden, particularly among older individuals and those with more severe depressive symptoms.
Although long COVID was evenly distributed across clinical departments, significant interdepartmental differences in anxiety and depression underscore the influence of work characteristics and environment.
Targeted psychological support and ongoing mental health monitoring are warranted to promote recovery and enhance occupational resilience in the post-pandemic era.

Web | DOI | Cureus

What happened to proper psychology and/or qualified psychology people noting they have to look at situation first as it explains 90% of cases and once you’ve controlled for or supported and sorted that practically then and only then can you start saying the difference on these scales warrants therapy working on someone’s ’internal factors’ - and that’s if it was an illness where it was relevant?

There are obviously certain professions where the job itself , the marginal fit error/level of obligation if you aren’t on form , and culture of disposing of or not being kind to those ill bangs one over the head as an obvious bad fit for certain conditions

It’s hard to do nursing working from home lying flat and standard shifts are 12hrs. Or in eg a GP where you’ve got to keep up the pace thru appointments. Or various other options but I doubt private options are particularly kind. Most hospitals give parking to doctors but not nurses who have to then catch whatever buses and walk etc.

Of course there will be departmental variation

What thicko thinks not analysing whether the working conditions and things like travel and parking across these shouldn’t be the obvious thing in relation to this?

It’s adding insult to injury if you aren’t the same level of ill and your boss plays games and makes you iller and pretends you’ve gone from being the indispensable person they couldn’t do without to someone they claim is the opposite instead of acknowledging truth - sane person just ill with an orrible employer.

And no you can’t move when you are ill because you can’t interview and look tempting when you are ill with this all consuming illness as it’s not like ‘I can’t use my leg/arm/get up early but the rest of me is still great, so I’ll find somewhere that doesn’t need that one thing’ so unless your employer plays ball instead of plays game they know you’ve not the energy to fight back on showing up the fibs and hand playing whilst ticking the boxes they set of normally meetings on top of if you have to still produce work too and not make mistakes whilst work is made miserable and you are observed in a way others aren’t.

Is it the illness causing it or employers and their attitudes? Ie culture of others?

 

[Peter T]

Is it the illness causing it or employers and their attitudes? Ie culture of others?

Not sure how relevant this is, but first reading this thread what came to mind was how much disillusion there was amongst NHS nursing staff well before the pandemic.