Female gender and psychological profile of outpatients attending Post-COVID-19 follow-up: some preliminary results

Abstract

Background: The Post-COVID syndrome, characterized by persistence of psychological, neurologic, and physical symptoms, affects a large proportion of COVID-19 survivors. Specifically, females seem at increased risk of experiencing more psychological manifestations of Post-COVID Syndrome. Methods: A sample of 60 PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) confirmed COVID-19 outpatients (48.3% female; age mean= 56.1; SD= 10.8) attending an outpatient clinic dedicated to Post-COVID-19 follow-up was enrolled for this study. Each participant completed the Psychosocial Index to assess stress, well-being, psychological distress, and illness behavior, the Impact of Event Scale – Revised to evaluate post-traumatic stress symptoms and, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale to assess anxiety and depression; the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale to assess resilience; and N scale of NEO Five Factor to assess “Neuroticism”. Results: More than half of patients showed clinical or subclinical anxiety and depressive symptoms. Post-traumatic stress symptoms were found in 58.3% of sample. Resilience levels were in a medium range (71.0 ± 15.2). Statistical analysis found a predominance of depressive symptomatology (p = 0.0453), hyperarousal manifestations (p = 0.0049), perception of stress (p = 0.0001) and trait of neuroticism in women (p 0.0001). Our results show psychological distress, post-traumatic symptoms, poor psychological well-being, depression and anxiety symptoms for several weeks after infection in patients who had COVID-19. Moreover, female outpatients had a higher perception of distress, hyperarousal manifestations and depressive symptomatology than the male counterpart. Conclusions: As a novelty, this study gives us a deeper understanding of the psychological Post-COVID-19 profile in a clinical sample of pneumological outpatients. Moreover, it focused on gender differences identifying the female gender as a risk factor with respect to psychological illness. Our findings suggest the relevance of planning personalized interventions and assessment aimed at higher psychopathological risk groups, such as females.

Keywords

• gender
• medical setting
• post-covid syndrome
• outpatients
• psychological profile.