摘要
Background The ongoing pandemic has led to a global surge in coronavius disease 2019(COVID-19)-related mental health research.However,most related publications come from Western countries or China,and their findings cannot alwrays be extrapolated to Arabl countries.Aims This study provides a quantitative and qualitative analysis of mental health research pertaining to Arab countries'response to the COVID-19 pandemic.Methods A scoping review of the World Health Organzation(WHO)C0VID-19 database for publications on mental health was conducted by authors afllated with.Arab istutions,including artides from inception to 24 October 2020.The indluded publications were evaluated for their national distribution,international cllaboration,publication type,and main research themes.Mehological quality analysis of the incuded research studies was performed using the original and mdified versions of the Newcastle Ottawa Scale.Results In total,102 articles were included in this study,averaging 4.6 articles per Arab country.Most of the articles emerged from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,Jordan,and Egypt.A majority of publications demonstrated intermational cllaboration.Most of the publications were original research studies and cross sectional in design.The predominant research theme was examining the pandemic s mental health effects on the general population and healthcare workers.0nly 28.0% of the studies were of high methodologial quality,where as 41.5% were moderate and 30.5% were low in quality.Conclusions Mental health research in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Arab region has quantitative and qualitative shoftfalls.Arab institutions need torespond to the pandemic prompty in order to address the delineated research gap and to generate higher-quality research output.
