BACKGROUND The global health care system has been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns have been imposed to stop the virus from spreading. Due to rapid spread of corona virus, citizens are facing fear, anxiety, and depression directly affecting their mental health. Adults having poor health are at a higher risk of being infected. This situation has created a stressful atmosphere and resulted in the development of many psychological problems in individuals. Those having pre-existing

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... nditions or co-morbidities have higher mortality risk as compared to healthy individuals. Hence, the issue is more common in people having co-morbidities, with diabetes mellitus being one common among them. We wanted to study the psychological impact mainly stress in diabetic population residing in rural setup in this era of Covid-19 outbreak. METHODS A cross-sectional study was conducted among 381 diagnosed diabetic patients attending outpatient department of Rural Health Training Centre affiliated to the tertiary care hospital. The collected data was entered and also analyzed for percentage, mean, standard deviation and variation coefficient. RESULTS Approximately half (51.96 %) of the participants reported a stress of moderate level during Covid-19 with mean ± SD (20.07 ± 3.83), overall mean was (21.55 ± 8.67) and the variation coefficient was 40.22%. The variance in stress level in diabetics with HbA1c levels of less than 6 %, 6 – 8 % and > 8 % depicting the various levels of control of diabetes was 39.36, 40.84 and 40.50 respectively. Similarly the variance coefficient among stress was 42.39, 41.34, 34.65 and 32.12 % when the duration of diabetes was compared in the respondents indicating that the stress level was widely distributed amongst all the participants. CONCLUSIONS Strategies need to be implemented to take care of mental health in diabetic patients especially in this Covid pandemic era. KEY WORDS Stress, COVID-19 Pandemic, Diabetes Mellitus, Rural Population