Evaluation on Malaysian Mental Health During Movement Control Order/ Penilaian Tahap Kesihatan Mental Rakyat Malaysia Semasa Perintah Kawalan Pergerakan

Abstract

The movement control order (MCO) is one of the measures taken by the Malaysian government to control the spread of the COVID19 pandemic. This enforcement has left an impact on various sectors including the economy, education, industry, admissions, health and others. The sudden change in daily activities during the COVID19 pandemic is seen as one of the most likely factors to a person’s mental health deterioration. This study aims to identify the mental health level of Malaysians during the MCO which was enforced from 18 March 2020 to 31 December 2020. Therefore, a longitudinally formed of non-experimental study was conducted. A set of questionnaires on the assessment of depression, anxiety and stress were distributed to the public using a simple random sampling method. The evaluation and data collection process were carried out during the second phase, third phase, fourth phase and post-MCO phase. Descriptive data analysis of all three mental health and Kruskal -Wallis analysis was performed to determine the differences in mental health between the three phases using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) software. The findings show that the anxiety and depression of Malaysians during the second phase of PKP is higher than in the third phase of MCO. Overall, the level of anxiety and stress of the majority of Malaysians are normal in the fourth phase of the MCO. Meanwhile, the depression level of Malaysians improved from one phase of MCO to the next. The post-MCO phase showed that each of the mental health problems in this study was experienced by less than one -third of the total respondents. Government support in terms of financial aid and the provision of current information on the COVID19 problem could to some extent reduce the deterioration of public mental health.