Assessing Awareness, Attitude and Perceived Stress among Indian Population During COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross Sectional Study

COVID 19 pandemic has taken the entire world by storm leading to swift and unprecedented changes to our daily life. In addition to physical damage, COVID-19 also took its toll on mental health leading to fears, anxiety and stress among individuals worldwide. It is essential to assess the level of public's awareness regarding the virus so that we can help by spreading information that could help them stay safe. Hence, the present study was planned to evaluate the awareness, attitude and perceived mental stress among Indian population. An online survey was conducted using a semi-structured questionnaire (google form). A total of 103 responses were recorded. Maximum number of participants (41%) were students while health care professionals also formed a large chunk (31%) of the total participants. Television was the most important source of information regarding COVID 19 (n=82) followed by newspaper (n=51) and friends/family (n=50). Most of the participants reported having adopted measures like regular cleaning of hands, wearing mask while going outdoors, social distancing, staying at home and maintaining proper hygiene in their daily routine to prevent COVID 19. A multiple choice question was asked on percentage of Covid infections being mild/asymptomatic, severe and critical (as per WHO data), and only 19.4% could give the correct answer. Regarding the other mcq question on people who are more likely to develop serious Covid illness, 96.1% replied correctly. Analysis of data using Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) showed that 19.4% participants had low and 80.6% had moderate perceived stress. None of the participants reported severe perceived stress. The results of the study indicate that there is a need to intensify awareness strategies and also ponder upon ways to address the mental health issues as indicated by the stress levels in the population.