Abstract
The Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent public health measures were shown to impact negatively on people’s mental health. In particular, women were reported to be at higher risk than men of developing symptoms of stress/anxiety/depression, and resilience was considered a key factor for positive mental health outcomes. In the present study, a sample of Italian female teachers (n = 66, age: 51.5 ± 7.9 years) was assessed with self-report instruments one month before and one month after the start of the Covid-19 lockdown: mindfulness skills, empathy, personality profiles, interoceptive awareness, psychological well-being, emotional distress and burnout levels were measured. Meanwhile, they received an 8-week Mindfulness-Oriented Meditation (MOM) course, through two group meetings and six individual video-lessons. Based on baseline personality profiles, analyses of variance were performed in a low-resilience (LR, n = 32) and a high-resilience (HR, n = 26) group. The LR and HR groups differed at baseline in most of the self-report measures. Pre–post MOM significant improvements were found in both groups in anxiety, depression, affective empathy, emotional exhaustion, psychological well-being, interoceptive awareness, character traits and mindfulness levels. Improvements in depression and psychological well-being were higher in the LR vs. HR group. We conclude that mindfulness-based training can effectively mitigate the psychological negative consequences of the Covid-19 outbreak, helping in particular to restore well-being in the most vulnerable individuals.
Highlights
The Italian population has recently experienced the first nationwide lockdown of the 21st century due to the Covid-19 infectious disease
Results largely supported H1: the analysis of data at baseline revealed that the low-resilience group had significantly worse average scores than the high-resilience group in terms of personality profiles, mindfulness skills, affective empathy, interoceptive awareness, psychological well-being, anxiety, depression and burnout levels
This between-group difference is in line with previous research that found resilience to be directly related, on the one hand, to mindfulness [50], psychological well-being [48] and interoceptive awareness [51], and on the other hand, inversely related to burnout [53], anxiety and depression [52]
Summary
The Italian population has recently experienced the first nationwide lockdown of the 21st century due to the Covid-19 infectious disease. After the Covid-19 outbreak in China in December 2019, the epidemic moved to the European region and was declared a pandemic by the WHO on 11 March. 2020 [1], when Italy was the worst affected country outside China and was soon becoming the new center of the virus spread. City and regional lockdowns in Italy had already started in February, but the nationwide lockdown started on 9 March 2020, with an estimated 56 million people ordered to remain at home: bars, restaurants, schools and churches were closed and only essential services were permitted (e.g., vital health-care, food stores, electricity/gas/water/fuel suppliers, garbage collection). Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 6450; doi:10.3390/ijerph17186450 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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