Objective During pandemic periods, health-workers are most negatively affected, and their anxiety/stress scores and the frequency of anxiety/depression have increased. In this study, the psychosocial impact and anxiety depression scores of health-workers during the Covid-19 outbreak were investigated.

Materials and Methods: The study was carried out in 167 health-workers working in the pandemic clinic and other related clinics where the examination/treatment of patients with suspected Covid-19 in June-2020. A questionnaire was applied to the health-workers. Besides sociodemographic characteristics feeling, of anxiety/stresses, contact with a Covid-19 patient, Covid-19 testing and positivity rate, and changes in body weight and the amount of cigarettes smoked were questioned. The same questionnaire was applied to 115 people who applied to the smoking cessation clinic as the control group and the data were compared. A second survey was applied to health-workers in December/2020. Changes of anxiety/stress feel, sleep disorder, physical/mental fatigue status were questioned. In addition, the anxiety and depression scores of the health-workers were determined with the Hospital Anxiety Depression Scale. The data were analyzed in SPSS-15.0 program.

Results: A total of 282 people, 167 of whom were health-workers participated in the study. The biggest two concerns of the health-workers were the fear of contracting the Covid-19 disease (44.3%) and transmitting the disease to their families (74.4%).Anxiety score was high in 25.7% of the health-workers, this rate was 49.1% for depression. While Covid-19 test positivity was 1.3% in June/2020,it increased to 16.9% in December/2020. In addition an increase in angry/irritability, and the amount of cigarettes smoked were observed in health workers. The pandemic caused an increase in body weight in both the workers and the control group. Our data showed that health-workers were more twice adversely affected than control group in the pandemic period (respectively 77.8%, 35.4%), (p<0.01).Health-workers both in the pandemic and other related clinics were affected at similar levels during pandemic period (p>0.05).

Conclusion: High levels of anxiety and depression scores were found in health-workers.It was also found to be twice as high as the anxiety/stress control group.The increases observed during the six-month follow-up period clearly indicate the risk in health-workers.Considering that the pandemic period continues; measures should be taken to support the mental health of health-workers.