  Citation: Narendra Kumar, M.K.; Francis, B.; Hashim, A.H.; Zainal, N.Z.; Abdul Rashid, R.; Ng, C.G.; Danaee, M.; Hussain, N.; Sulaiman, A.H. Prevalence of Anxiety and Depression among Psychiatric Healthcare Workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Malaysian Perspective. Healthcare 2022, 10, 532. https://doi.org/10.3390/ healthcare10030532 Academic Editor: Axel Steiger Received: 3 February 2022 Accepted: 11 March 2022 Published: 14 March 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). healthcare Article Prevalence of Anxiety and Depression among Psychiatric Healthcare Workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Malaysian Perspective Mehul Kumar Narendra Kumar 1,2 , Benedict Francis 1,2 , Aili Hanim Hashim 1,2 , Nor Zuraida Zainal 1,2 , Rusdi Abdul Rashid 1,2 , Chong Guan Ng 1,2 , Mahmoud Danaee 3 , Nurulwafa Hussain 4 and Ahmad Hatim Sulaiman 1,2, * 1 Department of Psychological Medicine, University Malaya Medical Centre, Kuala Lumpur 59100, Malaysia; mehulkumar32@siswa.um.edu.my (M.K.N.K.); benfrancis@um.edu.my (B.F.); ailihas@um.edu.my (A.H.H.); norzuraida@um.edu.my (N.Z.Z.); rusdi@um.edu.my (R.A.R.); chong_guan@um.edu.my (C.G.N.) 2 Faculty of Medicine, University Malaya, Kuala Lumpur 50603, Malaysia 3 Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University Malaya, Kuala Lumpur 50603, Malaysia; mdanaee@um.edu.my 4 Department of Psychiatry and Mental Health, Hospital Melaka, Jalan Mufti Haji Khalil, Melaka 75400, Malaysia; nurulwafahussain@gmail.com * Correspondence: hatim@um.edu.my Abstract: The psychological distress reported among frontline healthcare workers (HCWs) is con- cerning. Little is known about the mental health of non-frontline, psychiatric HCWs, who play a central role in handling the mental health crisis during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to examine the prevalence of anxiety and depression among psychiatric HCWs and evaluate its association with socio-demographic, socio-economic, work-related factors and coping strategies. The authors proposed a cross-sectional study design using the Hospital Anxiety and Depressive Scale (HADS) and Brief-COPE scale. This study found that the prevalence of anxiety and depression were 22.0% and 16.8%, respectively. A multivariate analysis revealed that married psychiatric HCWs had a lower level of anxiety with OR = 0.31 (95% CI: 0.11–0.83). Psychiatric HCWs who were experienc- ing financial hardships, were unvaccinated and those who had a shorter duration of service in the psychiatric department had a higher level of depressive symptoms with OR = 0.31 (CI: 1.19–11.27), 3.21 (CI: 0.97–10.52), and 1.01 (CI: 1.00–1.02), respectively. For every increase of one unit of avoidant coping score among respondents, the odds of having anxiety and depression increased by 1.25 times (CI: 1.15–1.37) and 1.20 times (CI: 1.09–1.32), respectively, whereas for every increase of one unit of religious coping score among respondents, the odds of having anxiety reduced by 1.42 times (CI: 1.10–1.84). The authors highlight that psychosocial measures addressing the relatively high levels of anxiety and depression among psychiatric HCWs should be a key priority to ensure the sustainment of mental health services in the face of this prolonged pandemic. Keywords: COVID-19; anxiety; depression; coping; mental health; psychiatry; non-frontline; healthcare workers; Malaysia 1. Introduction It has been almost two years since coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) emerged in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China on 12 December 2019. Malaysia saw its first COVID-19 case on 25 January 2020. The World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on 11 March 2020 [1]. Despite almost two years since the emergence of COVID-19, the number of new global cases is still at concerning lev- els. As of 1 October 2021, COVID-19 has caused more than 234 million cases and 4.7 million deaths globally, with more than 2.2 million cases and 26 thousand deaths attributed to COVID-19 within Malaysia alone [2,3]. Healthcare 2022, 10, 532. https://doi.org/10.3390/healthcare10030532 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/healthcare