Prevalence of Psychological Distress regarding the Pandemic Caused by COVID-19 in the Chilean Population

In Chile, the crisis caused by Covid-19 is superimposed over the sociopolitical crisis which began on 18 October 2019, creating a highly complex scenario affecting human psychological wellbeing. With this outlook, it is necessary to have reliable instruments allowing for measurement of the psychological wellbeing associated with the exclusive conditions of the pandemic, and to know the profile of the most affected people. The study objectives was to evaluate the prevalence of psychological distress in the Chilean population through the Covid-19 Peritraumatic Distress Index (CPDI) instrument, which has been used in several countries for the same purposes. The study is of a quantitative nature with a non-probabilistic sample design and it measured peritraumatic distress in two different moments of the pandemic. The sample included a total of 4379 participants. The results allow us to conclude that the CDPI has a high degree of reliability for the Chilean population, with a Cronbach?s ? of .901. Peritraumatic distress prevalence was 73.2% in the first measurement and 73.8% in the second, and principally affected women, students, the unemployed, people with incomes below the minimum wage, and middle-income people.