Coping with the COVID-19 Pandemic: Perceived Changes in Psychological Vulnerability, Resilience and Social Cohesion before, during and after Lockdown.

Sarita Silveira,Hannah Matthaeus,Tania Singer,Mazda Adli,Martin Hecht,Manuel C Voelkle

doi:10.3390/ijerph19063290

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns have posed unique and severe challenges to our global society. To gain an integrative understanding of pervasive social and mental health impacts in 3522 Berlin residents aged 18 to 65, we systematically investigated the structural and temporal relationship between a variety of psychological indicators of vulnerability, resilience and social cohesion before, during and after the first lockdown in Germany using a retrospective longitudinal study design. Factor analyses revealed that (a) vulnerability and resilience indicators converged on one general bipolar factor, (b) residual variance of resilience indicators formed a distinct factor of adaptive coping capacities and (c) social cohesion could be reliably measured with a hierarchical model including four first-order dimensions of trust, a sense of belonging, social interactions and social engagement, and one second-order social cohesion factor. In the second step, latent change score models revealed that overall psychological vulnerability increased during the first lockdown and decreased again during re-opening, although not to baseline levels. Levels of social cohesion, in contrast, first decreased and then increased again during re-opening. Furthermore, participants who increased in vulnerability simultaneously decreased in social cohesion and adaptive coping during lockdown. While higher pre-lockdown levels of social cohesion predicted a stronger lockdown effect on mental health, individuals with higher social cohesion during the lockdown and positive change in coping abilities and social cohesion during re-opening showed better mental health recovery, highlighting the important role of social capacities in both amplifying but also overcoming the multiple challenges of this collective crisis.

Highlights

Using an individual difference approach, we explored the interrelationship of the three constructs over time, aiming to determine whether increases in resilience and social cohesion could help buffer the detrimental effects of this collective stressor on mental health and psychological vulnerability, or, in contrast, whether these were affected by the lockdown, since it is associated with social isolation and other social restrictions
This study reports on data that were assessed in the context of the CovSocial project, a longitudinal study that employs a multi-measurement approach to investigate biopsychosocial dimensions of vulnerability, resilience and social cohesion as impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 in a Berlin population
The current study focused on investigating the structural and temporal interplay between vulnerability, resilience, adaptive coping and social cohesion during the COVID-19 pandemic in Berlin using a retrospective longitudinal design and a broad range of markers of vulnerability and resilience as well as a novel approach to subjective psychological markers of social cohesion

Summary

Introduction

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak and its numerous adverse biopsychosocial consequences is considered an unprecedented challenge for individuals and societies at a global scale [1,2]. The COVID-19 pandemic was proclaimed as a global public health crisis by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 30 January 2020. Several studies already provide seminal evidence of a plethora of direct and indirect pervasive impacts of 4.0/).

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion