Meaning in Life and Self-Control Buffer Stress in Times of COVID-19: Moderating and Mediating Effects With Regard to Mental Distress.

Tatjana Schnell,Henning Krampe

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2020.582352

Abstract

Meaning in Life and Self-Control Buffer Stress in Times of COVID-19: Moderating and Mediating Effects With Regard to Mental Distress.

Highlights

Within the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence from all over the world has accumulated that mental distress has increased substantially
A first systematic review and meta-analysis of mental distress during the COVID-19 pandemic found pooled prevalence rates of anxiety, depression, and insomnia of 23.2%, 22.8%, and 38.9%, respectively [25]. These findings suggest that the magnitude of mental health burden caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is comparable to the burden of previous epidemics [26, 27] and of traumatic life events [28]
The primary objective of this study was twofold: to test if two psychological resources—meaningfulness and self-control— would buffer stress resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic by attenuating related general mental distress, and to examine if high levels of COVID-19 stress would be associated with crisis of meaning and, via this path, statistically predict elevated general distress

Summary

Introduction

Within the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, evidence from all over the world has accumulated that mental distress has increased substantially. Stress arose from multiple problems associated with the pandemic, such as how to protect oneself and loved ones against infections, confusion, frustration, social isolation, and various fears of the future [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15] These stressors took their toll, as indicated by recent studies which report high prevalence rates of clinically significant general mental distress from 16.5% to 46%, of depression from 5.3% to 34.19%, of anxiety from 8.7% to 32.1%, and symptoms of acute stress reactions from 3.8% to 41.8% [8,9,10, 16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24]. A potential aggravation of mental distress due to the occurrence of crises of meaning was examined

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Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion