RESUMO
INTRODUCTION: The infection with SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus started in the city of Wuhan in China in 2019 and has not stopped spreading around the world since then. From March 11, 2020 The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared this COVID-19 infection a global pandemic. As a result, the Tunisian government has taken several measures in order to prevent the progression of the pandemic. These different changes can have different psychological consequences for both adults and children. OBJECTIVES: We proposed to study the initial impact of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic on Tunisian parents and children. MATERIAL AND METHODS: We conducted a prospective descriptive study two weeks after the proclamation of the curfew and one week after the proclamation of sanitary lockdown in Tunisia. Parents of Tunisian children were invited to voluntarily answer an anonymous questionnaire posted on social media. The questionnaire included questions on socio-demographic characteristics and the degree of impact of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic on family habits and activities. The stress level of the parent responding to the questionnaire was measured by the Impact Event Scale Revised (IES-R). RESULTS: One hundred and thirty-eight parents answered this questionnaire of which 88% were mothers. Fathers had to operate changes in their working arrangements in 87.2% of the cases and mothers had to do so in 79.8%. One of the parents chose to live far from the family in 13% of the cases. Only 1% of parents did not teach or talk to their children about hygiene rules. The parents of our study reported that they had a child aged 12 or less in 91% of cases with an average age of six years and a sex ratio of 1.13. Parents sought to keep them occupied in 58.6% of the cases. Children did different activities during this period: watching television in 41%, playing games in 27% and studying in 38% of the cases. In 41.4% of the cases, parents had a child aged over 12 years with an average age around 15 years and a sex ratio of 0.9. Teenagers often spent their time on tablets/computers in 80%, 52% watched movies or series, 31.25% participated in house cleaning activities, 27% spent time cooking for their family, 14.5% read books and 4.16% did social work. Parents reported that their children's behaviour changed in 60% of the cases when the children were 12 or younger and in 20% of the cases when the children were older than 12. The IES-R scores for the parents interviewed ranged from 2 to 79 with an average of 28.9 ± 18. In 48 cases, the score was greater than 32. The severity of the impact was associated with the female sex of the parent responding to the questionnaire (P = 0.04). We found a positive correlation between the IES score and the symptomatology of children with P < 0.001 and r = 0.52 when the age was 12 years or less and P = 0.001 and r = 0.518 when the age was strictly superior to 12. CONCLUSIONS: Both parents and children were affected when the COVID-19 pandemic began to spread in Tunisia. Psychological intervention is essential in order to help them get through this crisis with as few consequences as possible.
