Assessing The Relationship Between Stressors and Mental Health Among PPV Volunteers: Religiosity as a Coping Strategy

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a significant change in the way we perceive things around us, live our lives, and expect the future to be. Although we have gone through the worst event of our lives, some of us are still having difficulties continuing our daily routines. Working closely with vaccine recipients exposed them to excessive danger since they were unaware of the recipients’ health status. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the role of religiosity in moderating the effect of the stressors, comprising workload & environment, organizer & colleagues, dealing with recipients and knowledge & skills, on mental health among volunteers that comprise psychological distress, physical illness, and mental illness. A total of 226 volunteers from 10 PPVs were selected using a convenience sampling technique. Each of them was given a 21-item questionnaire to be filled out via the WhatsApp application. The items in the questionnaire were adopted from past research. The findings show that workload & environment and dealing with recipients are the significant stressors that lead to psychological distress. Furthermore, religiosity is found to moderate the effect of dealing with recipients on psychological distress. Regarding physical illness, workload & environment, dealing with recipients and knowledge & skills are the significant stressors that influence physical illness. In this relationship, religiosity does not act as a significant moderator. Regarding mental illness, workload & environment and dealing with recipients are found to be the significant stressors that contribute to mental illness. However, when religiosity was tested as a moderator, it was discovered that religiosity influences the relationship between knowledge & skills and mental illness. The findings confirm the significant role of religion as a coping strategy to address the influence of certain stressors on mental health.