Abstract :
COVID-19 starts to spread between the countries since the beginning of 2020 and infects millions of people worldwide. The governments put a strict rule, including lockdown, to prevent the disease; many health consequences happened and got attention from clinicians and researchers. This study aim to assess the severity of anxiety symptoms developed in King Faisal University students by continuous stress and lockdown due to the pandemic (COVID-19). A cross-sectional study was done using the Arabic version of the Hamilton anxiety rating scale, which we apply online, targeting King Faisal University students; the total number of participants was 529. This study showed that 73.2 % of King Faisal University student have mild anxiety symptoms, 14.2 % reported to have mild to moderate anxiety symptoms, while 7.4 % of the students have moderate to severe anxiety symptoms, only a few (5.3%) of the students reported to have very severe anxiety symptoms. The severity of anxiety symptoms significantly related to age, marital status, being a medical college student and smoking. We can conclude that most participants have mild anxiety symptoms while the rest of the participants reported having more severe anxiety symptoms. Age, marital status, smoking and being a medical college student can affect the severity of anxiety symptoms among the population. It is highly recommended to start screening, education and prevention programs for psychiatric impacts among university students and the community as soon as possible since the COVID 19 pandemic is still going.
