The Invisible COVID-19 Crisis: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Risk Among Frontline Physicians Treating COVID-19 Patients

This study evaluated post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among frontline US physicians (treating COVID-19 patients) in comparison with second-line physicians (not treating COVID-19 patients), and identified the significance and patterns of factors associated with higher PTSD risk. A cross-sectional, web-based survey was deployed during August and September, 2020, to practicing physicians in the 18 states with the largest COVID-19 cases. Among 1,478 responding physicians, 1,017 completed the PTSD Checklist (PCL-5). First, the PCL-5 was used to compare symptom endorsement between the two physician groups. A greater percentage of frontline than second-line physicians had clinically significant endorsement of PCL-5 symptoms and higher PCL-5 scores. Second, logistic regression and seven nonlinear machine learning (ML) algorithms were leveraged to identify potential predictors of PTSD risk by analyzing variable importance and partial dependence plots. Predictors of PTSD risk included cognitive/psychological measures, occupational characteristics, work experiences, social support, demographics, and workplace characteristics. Importantly, the final ML model random forest, identified patterns of both damaging and protective predictors of PTSD risk among frontline physicians. Key damaging factors included depression, burnout, negative coping, fears of contracting/transmitting COVID-19, perceived stigma, and insufficient resources to treat COVID-19 patients. Protective factors included resilience and support from employers/friends/family/significant others. This study underscores the value of ML algorithms to uncover nonlinear relationships among protective/damaging risk factors for PTSD in frontline physicians, which may better inform interventions to prepare healthcare systems for future epidemics/pandemics.

Health-behaviors associated with the growing risk of adolescent suicide attempts: A data-driven cross-sectional study

Purpose: Identify and examine the associations between health behaviors and increased risk of adolescent suicide attempts, while controlling for socioeconomic and demographic differences. Design: A data-driven analysis using cross-sectional data. Setting: Communities in the state of Montana from 1999 to 2017. Subjects: Selected 22,447 adolescents of whom 1,631 adolescents attempted suicide at least once. Measures: Overall 29 variables (predictors) accounting for psychological behaviors, illegal substances consumption, daily activities at schools and demographic backgrounds, were considered. Analysis: A library of machine learning algorithms along with the traditionally-used logistic regression were used to model and predict suicide attempt risk. Model performances (goodness-of-fit and predictive accuracy) were measured using accuracy, precision, recall and F-score metrics. Results: The non-parametric Bayesian tree ensemble model outperformed all other models, with 80.0% accuracy in goodness-of-fit (F-score:0.802) and 78.2% in predictive accuracy (F-score:0.785). Key health-behaviors identified include: being sad/hopeless, followed by safety concerns at school, physical fighting, inhalant usage, illegal drugs consumption at school, current cigarette usage, and having first sex at an early age (below 15 years of age). Additionally, the minority groups (American Indian/Alaska Natives, Hispanics/Latinos), and females are also found to be highly vulnerable to attempting suicides. Conclusion: Significant contribution of this work is understanding the key health-behaviors and health disparities that lead to higher frequency of suicide attempts among adolescents, while accounting for the non-linearity and complex interactions among the outcome and the exposure variables.