Abstract
This study investigated how young Italian people experienced the period of peak spread of COVID-19 in their country by probing their emotions, thoughts, events, and actions related to interpersonal and community bonds. This approach to the pandemic will highlight social dimensions that characterized contextual interactions from the specific perspective of Community Psychology. The aim was to investigate young people's experiences because they are the most fragile group due to their difficulty staying home and apart from their peers and because they are, at the same time, the most potentially dangerous people due to their urge to gather in groups. The research involved 568 university students, 475 females, and 93 males, with an average age of 21.82 years (SD = 4.836). The collected data were analyzed with the Grounded Theory Methodology, using the Atlas 8.0 software. From the textual data, representative codes were defined and grouped into 10 categories, which reflect the individuals' prosocial attitudes, behaviors, and values. These categories formed three macro-categories, called: “Collective Dimensions,” which includes Connectedness, Solidarity, Italian-ness, Social Problems, and Collective Mourning; “Prosocial Orientation,” which includes Trust and Hope; and “Collective Values,” which includes Values of Freedom, Respect of Social Rules, and Civic-Mindedness. All these macro-categories are indicative of the shared feelings experienced by Italians during the first time of the pandemic. Further practical implications of these results will be discussed, including a consideration of the risk of developing distress and improving well-being, as well as promoting preventive behaviors.
Highlights
This article will examine the perceived burden of the Covid-19 lockdown on the lives of young people from the specific perspective of Community Psychology.Lewin (1936) perspective situated this discipline at the boundary between individual and social events (Amerio, 2000; Kagan et al, 2007; Orford, 2008)
In our case, in line with the mission of community psychology to give voice to young people, among the most affected people by the pandemic’s social implications, we asked our students to freely express their thoughts and emotions related to their lockdown experience
The texts were categorized into collective dimensions such as connectedness, solidarity, social problems, and collective mourning, but the coding encompassed some specific unexpected thoughts concerning national belonging that were named “Italian-ness”
Summary
This article will examine the perceived burden of the Covid-19 lockdown on the lives of young people from the specific perspective of Community Psychology.Lewin (1936) perspective situated this discipline at the boundary between individual and social events (Amerio, 2000; Kagan et al, 2007; Orford, 2008). Italian Community Psychology in the COVID 19 Pandemic approach capable of analyzing the interplay of individual, relational, and social experiences (Prilleltensky, 2008; Di Napoli et al, 2019a). We examined the COVID-19 lockdown considering individual emotions and thoughts as well as actions and significant events of individual life. We propose a narrative setting, capable of depicting their experience in four individual dimensions (emotions, thoughts, actions, and events). We considered the individual domain of feelings and thoughts, that is, we took a cognitive and emotional perspective. Following Amerio (2000) and Ajzen and Kruglanski (2019), we considered actions as the best individual expression of the interaction with the external world; events concern the experiences that occur around people and are the expression of the contexts in which people are immersed
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