Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors Are Major Predictors of Mental Wellbeing During COVID-19 Pandemic Confinement: A Study on Adult Arabs in Higher Educational Institutions

Abstract Background: In previous times, infectious diseases affected the quality of human life during home confinement. This study investigated the influence of home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak on lifestyle, mental wellbeing, nutritional status, and sleeping pattern. Method: An online multicategory questionnaire was distributed to collect Demographical information and combined the following tools: Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ), International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ), WHO-5 wellbeing score, and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). A snowball none-discriminate sampling procedure was followed to collect data from people attending or working at higher institution had covering the period between Mar/00/2020 and Apr/24/2020. A total of 1723 completed responses (917 Males 37.4 ±13.4 yrs. old and (806 Females 32.2 ± 11.5 yrs. old) were collected.Results: Female participants had significantly lower mental health scores as compared to males (53.9% vs 46.1%). on Mental wellbeing score was better among participants with medium and high Physical Activity Levels (p < 0.00). Additionally, mental wellbeing score was significantly improved by dietary quality and sleeping score (p < 0.001). However, physical activity was by far the major determinants of mental health score. Conclusion: Factors such as PA, Diet, sleeping patterns were associated with mental wellbeing during COVID-19 confinement among Arab participants.