*3.3. Sociodemographic Groups and Depression*

About half of the participants were relatively relaxed, where 52.57% had not lost their appetite, 56% felt depressed less than one day a week, 52.57% felt hopeful about the future, 68.53% did not feel that their life was a failure, 59.15% thought that people are unfriendly less than once a day, and 62.58% cried less than once a day (Table 3). About half of the participants (51.94%) felt sad, although they received support from their family and friends. **Table 3.** Percentage of participants feeling different depression symptoms. Response alternatives: 1 = not at all (less than in one day a week); 2 = sometimes (in one or two days); 3 = every now and then (3–4 days), 4 = all the time (5–7 days).


A significant difference was observed in the CES-D scores between married and unmarried participants, with those unmarried having higher scores (17.26, SD = 9.78) than those married (14.56, SD = 10.11) (Table 4). Females (16.25, SD = 10.23) had significantly greater scores than males (12.69, SD = 9.19). The CES-D score was not affected by the extent of knowledge of Covid-19. Participants who were concerned about the COVID-19 epidemic, spending three hours or more following the news, had higher scores than the less concerned ones. People under 55 years had higher scores (14.8–17.2) than those older than 55 years (12.21, SD = 9.97). Education had no significant effect. The number of children had a significant effect, where persons with children older than 16 years (13.45 SD = 10.06) had lower scores than people with younger children (15.84 SD = 10.23) or without children (16.34, SD = 9.72) (LSD test). Families with less than two members were significantly more depressed (17.35, SD = 10.39) than families with more than six members (14.55, SD = 9.67). Unemployed participants were significantly more depressed (16.18, SD = 10.25) than retirees (M = 12.83, SD = 9.90). The time spent engaging with COVID-19 news was reflected in the level of depression, where participants who spent more than 3 h daily had more depression (19.59, SD = 11.02) than the ones who spent one hour (13.89, SD = 9.64) or less than three hours (15.90, SD = 9.63).


**Table 4.** The CES-D score (mean, SD) for depression in different sociodemographic groups and the *p* value of ANOVA indicating the significant effect of the group.
