23 research outputs found
Illness Perceptions of COVID-19 in Europe: Predictors, Impacts and Temporal Evolution
Objective: Illness perceptions (IP) are important predictors of emotional and behavioral responses in many diseases. The current study aims to investigate the COVID-19-related IP throughout Europe. The specific goals are to understand the temporal development, identify predictors (within demographics and contact with COVID-19) and examine the impacts of IP on perceived stress and preventive behaviors.
Methods: This was a time-series-cross-section study of 7,032 participants from 16 European countries using multilevel modeling from April to June 2020. IP were measured with the Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire. Temporal patterns were observed considering the date of participation and the date recoded to account the epidemiological evolution of each country. The outcomes considered were perceived stress and COVID-19 preventive behaviors.
Results: There were significant trends, over time, for several IP, suggesting a small decrease in negativity in the perception of COVID-19 in the community. Age, gender, and education level related to some, but not all, IP. Considering the self-regulation model, perceptions consistently predicted general stress and were less consistently related to preventive behaviors. Country showed no effect in the predictive model, suggesting that national differences may have little relevance for IP, in this context.
Conclusion: The present study provides a comprehensive picture of COVID-19 IP in Europe in an early stage of the pandemic. The results shed light on the process of IP formation with implications for health-related outcomes and their evolution
Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on mental health: An international study
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic triggered vast governmental lockdowns. The impact of these lockdowns on mental health is inadequately understood. On the one hand such drastic changes in daily routines could be detrimental to mental health. On the other hand, it might not be experienced negatively, especially because the entire population was affected.
Methods
The aim of this study was to determine mental health outcomes during pandemic induced lockdowns and to examine known predictors of mental health outcomes. We therefore surveyed n = 9,565 people from 78 countries and 18 languages. Outcomes assessed were stress, depression, affect, and wellbeing. Predictors included country, sociodemographic factors, lockdown characteristics, social factors, and psychological factors.
Results
Results indicated that on average about 10% of the sample was languishing from low levels of mental health and about 50% had only moderate mental health. Importantly, three consistent predictors of mental health emerged: social support, education level, and psychologically flexible (vs. rigid) responding. Poorer outcomes were most strongly predicted by a worsening of finances and not having access to basic supplies.
Conclusions
These results suggest that on whole, respondents were moderately mentally healthy at the time of a population-wide lockdown. The highest level of mental health difficulties were found in approximately 10% of the population. Findings suggest that public health initiatives should target people without social support and those whose finances worsen as a result of the lockdown. Interventions that promote psychological flexibility may mitigate the impact of the pandemic
To Help or Not to Help? Prosocial Behavior, Its Association With Well-Being, and Predictors of Prosocial Behavior During the Coronavirus Disease Pandemic
Funding Information: This work was supported by grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation awarded to ATG (PP00P1_ 163716/1 and PP00P1_190082). The funder provided support in the form of salaries for authors (EH and ATG) but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: Copyright © 2022 Haller, Lubenko, Presti, Squatrito, Constantinou, Nicolaou, Papacostas, Aydın, Chong, Chien, Cheng, Ruiz, García-Martín, Obando-Posada, Segura-Vargas, Vasiliou, McHugh, Höfer, Baban, Dias Neto, da Silva, Monestès, Alvarez-Galvez, Paez-Blarrina, Montesinos, Valdivia-Salas, Ori, Kleszcz, Lappalainen, Ivanović, Gosar, Dionne, Merwin, Karekla, Kassianos and Gloster.The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic fundamentally disrupted humans’ social life and behavior. Public health measures may have inadvertently impacted how people care for each other. This study investigated prosocial behavior, its association well-being, and predictors of prosocial behavior during the first COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and sought to understand whether region-specific differences exist. Participants (N = 9,496) from eight regions clustering multiple countries around the world responded to a cross-sectional online-survey investigating the psychological consequences of the first upsurge of lockdowns in spring 2020. Prosocial behavior was reported to occur frequently. Multiple regression analyses showed that prosocial behavior was associated with better well-being consistently across regions. With regard to predictors of prosocial behavior, high levels of perceived social support were most strongly associated with prosocial behavior, followed by high levels of perceived stress, positive affect and psychological flexibility. Sociodemographic and psychosocial predictors of prosocial behavior were similar across regions.publishersversionPeer reviewe
Corrigendum: Illness perceptions of COVID-19 in Europe: predictors, impacts and temporal evolution
The Impact of Government Actions and Risk Perception on the Promotion of Self-Protective Behaviors During the COVID-19 Pandemic
We aim to understand the factors that drive citizens of different countries adhere to recommended self-protective behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Survey data obtained through the COVID Impact project was used. We combined previous evidence and change-point detection analysis to establish variations in self-protective behaviors across participating countries whose effect was then assessed by means of interrupted series analysis. A high level of compliance with health and governmental authorities’ recommendations were generally observed in all countries. The level of stress decreased near the period when countries such as Cyprus, Greece or the United Kingdom relaxed their prevention behavior recommendations. However, this relaxation of behaviors did not occur in countries such as Germany, Ireland or the United States. When the daily number of recorded COVID-19 cases decreased, people relaxed their protective behaviors (Cyprus, Greece, Ireland), although the opposite trend was observed in Switzerland. COVID-19 self-protective behavior following has been heterogeneous across countries examined. Our findings show that there is probably no single winning strategy for exiting future health crises, as similar interventions, aimed to promote self-protective behaviors, may be received differently depending on the singular population groups and on the specific geographical context in which they are implemented
The real data (black colored line) and the estimated continuous, piecewise-linear signal (red colored line) for the daily number of COVID-19 confirmed cases in nine countries.
The change-point locations are given with dotted, blue vertical lines.</p
Post-interventions linear trend with (decreasing) COVID-19 cases.
Post-interventions linear trend with (decreasing) COVID-19 cases.</p
Interrupted time series analysis for self-protective behaviors using significant variation in COVID-19 cases as the intervention date (dashed horizontal line).
Interrupted time series analysis for self-protective behaviors using significant variation in COVID-19 cases as the intervention date (dashed horizontal line).</p
Results of the change-point detection analysis for the self-protective behaviors variable in nine countries.
The real data are given with black colored line, while the estimated piecewise-constant signal is the red colored line. The estimated change-point locations are given with dotted, blue vertical lines.</p
Post-interventions linear trend with (decreasing) stringency index.
Post-interventions linear trend with (decreasing) stringency index.</p