Objective To investigate the mental health status of front-line medical professionals to support Wuhan during epidemic of COVID-19.

Methods The generalized Anxiety Disorder-7, Patient Health Questionaire-9, and the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 were used to conduct a questionnaire survey on the front-line medical professionals from Shandong Province working in a hospital in Wuhan.

Results All 112 supportive staff were invited and 81 valid questionnaires were obtained. Totally 32 medical staff had no anxiety symptoms, accounting for 39.51%;23 staff had moderate or above anxiety, accounting for 28.40%. There were 33 cases (40.74%)without depression and 28 cases(34.57%) with moderate or above depression, and 27 staff had stress disorder, accounting for 33.33%. The married medical staff had higher total scores of generalized anxiety scale and depression scale than the divorced and the single medical staff (P < 0.05), and the female staff had higher total score than male medical staff (P < 0.05). The staff with working experience less than 5 years had lowest total scores of anxiety scale, depression scale and post-traumatic stress disorder scale, while the staff with working experience between 6-10 years had the highest scores. The medical staff with working hours of 40 h per week or night shifts less than 4 times per week had lower total score of anxiety scale(P < 0.05).

Conclusions The first-line medical professionals to support Wuhan during epidemic of COVID-19 had different degrees of psychological stress reaction, and the severity was higher than that of similar survey results. Hospitals should pay attention to the mental health status of these medical staff in the first-line timely, and take reasonable measures such as taking turns, psychological counseling and humanistic care to relieve the psychological pressure of medical staff.