Psychological Distress During COVID-19 Confinement in Persons After Metabolic Surgery

Background: People suffering from obesity often experience distress and psychopathological symptoms that decrease after undergoing metabolic surgery; the confinement caused by the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the whole population in this regard. Given that individuals undergoing metabolic surgery are at increased risk of developing these disorders, it is important to identify them in order to prevent or treat them appropriately. Therefore, this study aims to determine the relationship between COVID-19-related psychological distress and psychopathological symptoms in people who underwent metabolic surgery. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted including 102 participants more than six months after undergoing metabolic surgery. Sociodemographic information was collected, as well as psychological distress related to COVID-19 and psychopathological symptoms measured using the SCL-90R. A Structural Equation Model was developed to evaluate the effects and correlation between variables. Results: 90.2% of the participants were women, 84% had undergone gastric sleeve surgery while the rest had undergone Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery. The model obtained showed a significant correlation between the subscales of the SCL 90-R and COVID-19 related psychological distress and both were negatively correlated with the age of the participants. The COVID-19-related psychological distress factor had a significant effect on fear of contagion, perception and knowledge of risk of contagion, with risk perception being the most explained with 95.8% of variance explained. In addition, the final model showed adequate goodness-of-fit indicators. Conclusions: Psychological distress caused by pandemic and confinement is evidenced by higher scores on the SCL-90R instrument in persons with metabolic surgery. However, further studies and psychometric testing with more homogeneous samples in terms of sex and surgical technique are required.