Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors Are Major Predictors of Mental Wellbeing During COVID-19 Pandemic Confinement: A Study on Adult Arabs in Higher Educational Institutions
Abstract Background In previous times, infectious diseases affected the quality of human life during home confinement. This study investigated the influence of home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak on lifestyle, mental wellbeing, nutritional status, and sleeping pattern. Method: An online multicategory questionnaire was distributed to collect Demographical information and combined the following tools: Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ), International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ), WHO-5 wellbeing score, and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). A snowball none-discriminate sampling procedure was followed to collect data from people attending or working at higher institution had covering the period between Mar/00/2020 and Apr/24/2020. A total of 1723 completed responses (917 Males 37.4 ± 13.4 yrs. old and (806 Females 32.2 ± 11.5 yrs. old) were collected. Results Female participants had significantly lower mental health scores as compared to males (53.9% vs 46.1%). on Mental wellbeing score was better among participants with medium and high Physical Activity Levels (p < 0.00). Additionally, mental wellbeing score was significantly improved by dietary quality and sleeping score (p < 0.001). However, physical activity was by far the major determinants of mental health score. Conclusion Factors such as PA, Diet, sleeping patterns were associated with mental wellbeing during COVID-19 confinement among Arab participants.