Comparison of the psychosocial burden of patients at the beginning of psychosomatic rehabilitation before and during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic – A multicentric cohort study of routine data

Abstract Background. The study objective is to analyze the influence of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on the psychosocial burden of people suffering from mental illness at the beginning of in-patient rehabilitation treatment in Germany Methods. Psychosocial stress at the beginning of rehabilitation of patient cohorts before or during the pandemic was compared using multivariate variance analyses (MANOVA) and univariate non-parametric Mann-Whitney-U-tests. The study refers to the data of patients from seven psychosomatic rehabilitation clinics of Celenus-Kliniken GmbH. Results. Based on the sampling of 7335 patients, statistically significant greater stress with a low effect size (η²p = .005) of the cohort affected by the pandemic was observed. Conclusions. People who started rehabilitation during the pandemic only demonstrated slightly greater psychosocial stress at the beginning of therapy.