Knowledge of Prevention Measures and Information About Coronavirus in Romanian Male Patients with Severe Mental Illness and Severe Alcohol Use Disorder.

purposePatients with severe mental illness (SMI) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) are at higher risk for contracting coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) and for poor outcomes of COVID-19 infection. One reason for this could be the lack of knowledge regarding preventive measures against COVID-19 and the inability of the psychiatric patients to discern misinformation from facts. PATIENTS AND

methodsThe study design was cross-sectional. We applied one questionnaire that evaluated knowledge of prevention measures and information about COVID-19 (comprised of two sections, each with five questions). The first section evaluated knowledge regarding the official WHO prevention measures against COVID-19, and the second consisted of false information about COVID-19 which examined the ability to identify misinformation about COVID-19. These questionnaires were applied face-to-face to psychiatric male inpatients from a tertiary psychiatric hospital in Bucharest diagnosed with SMI or severe alcohol disorder (SAUD) and to male controls from the community, matched by age and education. Mean scores of patients and controls were compared using Mann-Whitney test.

resultsThere were 115 male psychiatric patients in total (65 SMI and 50 SAUD) and 57 controls included after the matching procedure. We found statistically significant lower (

conclusionPatients with SMI and SAUD are less informed regarding COVID-19 infection and preventive measures compared to controls, while being prone to believing false information about COVID-19 as well.