This study explores four coping approaches—social connection, substance use, social media use, and relaxation techniques—to assess how they relate to mental distress over time during the pandemic at both situational (within-person) and habitual (between-person) levels. The study evaluated proportions of people having mental health problems, possible risk factors and the coping strategies people used during the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yan et al. also showed that positive coping strategies are related to fewer NEJM article on mental health challenges symptoms of stress and mental health problems, whereas negative coping strategies aggravated emotional distress among a large sample of Chinese people during the first COVID-19 outbreak.
Potential Moderators of Coping and Psychological Distress
Behavioral health interventions should be customized for different racio-cultural groups (Novacek et al., 2020; van Bavel et al., 2020) and frontline healthcare workers (Greenberg et al., 2020) to account for the unique experiences they have faced throughout the COVID-19 pandemic (Pink et al., 2021). Additionally, people can develop protective factors by attending support groups and skill-building interventions (Wasserman et al., 2020). Given that the COVID-19 pandemic has persisted for over two years and emerging evidence showing increased rates of suicidality, it is imperative that preventative strategies for suicide be explored and incorporated. For instance, an international study by Schluter et al. (2022) examining patterns of suicidal ideation across eight countries in four continents found that suicidal ideation increased significantly over the course of the pandemic. An international study conducted by Pirkis et al. (2020) with over 20 countries examined suicide rates in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic and found that there was no increase in suicide rates observed. As rates of depression have increased over the course of the pandemic (Ettman et al., 2022), one of the potential risks that might accompany that rise would be suicidal behaviour and ideation.
Stress, coping, and quality of life in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic
The frequency of using nine coping strategies differed significantly depending on gender. The scale consists of 28 statements with a 4-point response format (from 0 – I almost never do this to 3 – I almost always do this) and measures the frequency of use of 14 coping strategies. However, the authors did not use these criteria in further attempts to classify coping strategies. No data on coping with stress during the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic have been found in the available literature. The coping process consists of strategies, specific cognitive and behavioral efforts aimed at reducing or avoiding the effect of a stressor, undertaken in a specific stress transaction.
Beyond preventing direct deaths from infection, it is vital to explore preventing both the direct and indirect deaths related to the psychological impacts of COVID-19 through both a better understanding of the emerging evidence, and practical strategies. Brief online interventions can build resilience among healthcare workers (DeTore et al., 2021) and patients hospitalized due to COVID-19 (Shaygan et al., 2021). A six-week online resilience intervention which included expressive writing significantly enhanced resilience among adults who self-identified as having been significantly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic (Bechard et al., 2021). For example, in families with children, parents can facilitate increased resilience in their children by practicing a structured and warm caregiving approach (Stark et al., 2020) along with spending even short periods of quality time with one’s children (Bartlett & Vivrette, 2020). This can take the form of helping people to reorganize priorities, identify what they can do and cannot do, and generally harness the stress response to focus on positive gains (Crum et al., 2013; Crum & Lyddy, 2014).
Resources for Researchers
A growing number of studies show just how damaging the pandemic has been on the mental health of people around the world. A vast repertoire of coping strategies, and flexibility in their selection, may be the best methods to effectively cope with stressful lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic and protect individuals against decreased well-being. University students considered changes in lifestyle and environment related to lockdown and adjusted their best coping strategies to these stressful events. When the environment is unpredictable and uncontrollable, task-oriented coping is perceived as less adaptive, whereas avoidance-focused coping strategies are more effective in reducing stress levels.. Moss and Holahan thus proposed an integrative view in which coping encompasses both adaptive, momentary responses and enduring, habitual tendencies.|Data from sample 1 were subjected to the elastic net to predict the change from pre-pandemic strain to downturn by the multitude of variables acquired during the last assessment (see Supplementary Materials). The data of the twin from sample 2 was then used to impute the data during pandemic peak into the data from its twin in sample 1, thus creating a quasi-longitudinal data set (cf.48). Therefore, we created statistical twins based on the survey of both samples during the pandemic downturn using multivariate matching (for an overview, see79,80). Twenty-nine (7.3%) subjects did not complete the questionnaire and for one participant, no pre-pandemic data had been acquired (i.e., a human error occurred when sending out invitations to the last assessment). This procedure has the advantage that the questionnaires provide equal contribution to the composite score while changes across the pandemic can be directly interpreted relative to pre-pandemic values. During the common measurement at the relative pandemic downturn, statistical twins were created (see Quasi-longitudinal Matching in “Data processing” section).|3b, only men seemed to benefit from acceptance, which buffered against the rise in strain that was observed in the whole sample during the first peak of the pandemic. Importantly, these gender effects need to be considered with caution due to unequal group size (230 females vs. only 77 males). Maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (CERQ-mal) showed the same pattern as the previous risk factors (Fig. 2d). Risk factors exhibiting similar impact on the trajectory of psychological strain. All values were z-standardized using the pre-pandemic mean and standard deviation. Other effects did not reach statistical significance (Fs ≤ 2.46, ps ≥ 0.117).|For others, the struggle centered around unexpected changes in personal life circumstances, such as increased isolation and sedentary behaviors due to quarantining, increased responsibilities at home, and a complete change in how to approach daily activities. Unfortunately, the nonstop complications of modern life and its demands and expectations mean that some people’s alarm systems rarely shut off. Stress is a normal psychological and physical reaction to the demands of life.|It can be expected that individuals with greater trust in the government and its regulations also showed more willingness to participate in a study conducted by a university. These effects, however, were very small in magnitude and just barely passed the alpha error threshold (ps ≥ 0.039, ηp2 ≤ 0.01). Hence, while the results with respect to the first pandemic peak may be affected by the quasi-longitudinal matching procedure, this is not the case for differences between before the pandemic and its downturn.|If you are worried about yourself or someone else, contact your healthcare professional or mental health professional. Though feelings of distress about COVID-19 may come and go, they are still an issue for many people. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, life for many people changed very quickly. Public health efforts should be designed to support both the development of long-term coping habits and the capacity for flexible coping responses during crises.}
- Importantly, this change of reference due to incisive events seems to be independent of adaptive emotion regulation strategies (including reappraisal) since we did not observe clear effects for this moderator.
- Importantly, some of these intervention strategies, including computer-assisted resilience training, have already been developed and successfully tested (Aiello et al., 2011; Maunder et al., 2010; Weerkamp-Bartholomeus et al., 2020).
- Many people experienced symptoms of anxiety, depression, and substance use disorder during the pandemic.
