Anxiety in mothers of children with COVID-19 based on the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory.
Nagila Lima Fontenele, Daisyanne Augusto de Sales Santos, Isabela Araújo Linhares Castro and 5 others
PMID 42561269WHAT IT FOUND
50% of mothers of infants confirmed with COVID-19 had moderate anxiety; mothers with lower education or income had higher state anxiety during the child's infection.
Key findings
0117 of the 34 mothers were in the moderate-anxiety percentile range on STAI-Trait, and 17 were in the same range on STAI-State.
02No maternal sociodemographic variable showed a significant association with STAI-Trait anxiety percentiles.
03STAI-State anxiety was associated with education, and high state anxiety was significantly associated with income and education in bivariate analysis.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Only 34 mothers participated, and the study was limited to one city in northeastern Brazil. Many eligible mothers could not be included: 50 refused, 69 did not answer, 73 had inconsistent data, and 48 had no contact phone number. Anxiety was assessed by telephone in 2023 about children diagnosed with COVID-19 in 2020 or 2021, so recall may affect the state anxiety score. The design is cross-sectional, so it cannot show that education, income, or COVID-19 infection caused anxiety. Percentile cutoffs were set after normalization of the collected data, so the anxiety categories are specific to this sample.
Declared interests
The only funding statement thanks CAPES for scholarships granted to Santos DAS, Castro IAL, and Oliveira RKL.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that low education or low income caused maternal anxiety. This was a cross-sectional study of 34 mothers, and the significant association was with state anxiety during the child's infection, not with trait anxiety.