Anxiety among students of Islamic University of Gaza at the time of COVID-19 pandemic

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has many impacts on individuals’ physical and mental health, including unbearable psychological stress and anxiety. Aim: to assess the anxiety level among students of Islamic University of Gaza at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods and materials: A sample of 1121 students from 11 different colleges at the Islamic University of Gaza completed the online questionnaire which conists of demographic data and the 7-item Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7). Results: Most of the participants were females (63.2%), single (84.9%), enrolled as regular students (77.7%), not working (88.8%) and not having a chronic disease (97.4%). Results revealed that 33.4% of participants had mild anxiety, 26.3% had moderate and 20% had severe level of anxiety. Reported levels of anxiety were not impacted by age, sex, marital status or year of stduy. Conclusion and implication for practice: About half of the participants reported moderate to high levels of anxiety. The new experience of e-learning could be a factor that increased participants’ level of anxiety. Thus, faculty members and other university staff as well as the health care system in the Gaza Strip should pay attention to reduce anxiety levels among students and therefore; prevent its negative consequences. This could be reached by providing online training courses or setting channels of one-to-one online or phone counseling for students to alleviate the negative psychological effects of anxiety and to enhance students’ mental health of stutus.