After weeks of being stuck inside your New York City home or apartment during the COVID-19 pandemic, you’re feeling a range of emotions — and chances are, stress and anxiety are chief among them.
PatientWisdom, a New Haven, Connecticut, based company that describes itself as a “health engagement software solution platform,” launched its “Coping with COVID-19 Challenges” survey asking participants to describe their stress levels and what causes them anxiety over the weeks of dealing with the pandemic.
Gregory Makoul, founder of PatientWisdom, says the five-minute survey allows residents to anonymously provide insight on their stress levels. The data gathered will be forwarded to various public and private organizations in each region to help decision-makers determine if certain resources are needed to help put minds at ease.
“These are real world perspectives from people dealing with this right now,” he said. “Let’s get the results from these geographic areas and bring them to people who can do something to help.”
So far, about 600 individuals have participated in the ongoing survey, Makoul said. The preliminary results, he noted, are no surprise: People are feeling much more stress these days because of the pandemic, and they’re most concerned about their loved one’s well-beings.
“People are worried about their family, they’re not worried about themselves,” Makoul said.
He also pointed to one particularly troubling aspect of the survey: that only 64 percent of respondents said they were being careful about avoiding infection.
“That’s just not good enough for this pandemic,” he observed.
PatientWisdom has promoted the COVID-19 survey primarily through social media. There’s no set expiration date or target number of participants.
“This is obviously a very fluid situation. Life’s not going to be back to normal for a while,” he said. “We can look at our perspectives as they change over time, but we’re not planning on closing the survey” any time soon.
PatientWisdom plans to release its first report on the COVID-19 survey at the end of May.
Click here to participate in the survey.
This story first appeared on amny.com.
