Abstract
The COVID-19 emergency has hit the whole world, finding all countries unprepared to face it. The first studies focused on the medical aspects, neglecting the psychological dimension of the populations that were forced to face changes in everyday life and in some cases to stay forcedly at home in order to reduce contagion. The present research was carried out in Italy, one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic. The aim was to analyze the perception of happiness, mental health, and the sense of loneliness experienced by adults during the lockdown due to the COVID pandemic. Specifically, the variables will be examined in relation to gender difference, living alone, with partner, or with partner and children. The research followed a quantitative approach using an online questionnaire. The project involved 1100 subjects from whom 721 participants (75.5% women) were extrapolated. Of them, 17.3% claimed to live alone, 39.5% with their partner, and 43.1% with their partner and children. The results show that people in general experienced a lower level of happiness and mental health and higher levels of loneliness compared to normative sample. The lockdown and pandemic condition due to COVID-19 seems to have canceled the gender differences in the perception of happiness and mental health, while it seems to have increased the perception of loneliness experienced by males compared to the pre-pandemic condition. In addition, those who lived alone perceived a greater level of loneliness than those who lived with their partner or partner and children. Unexpectedly, no significant differences emerged regarding the level of happiness and mental health between those who had direct contact with the virus and those who did not. These data should make political decision-makers reflect on the need to pay more attention to the implications that such drastic measures as a lockdown can have on people’s psychological well-being.
Highlights
On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 epidemic a public health emergency of international interest (World Health Organization, 2020a), this information was not disclosed by the media in the various countries but only after the situation manifested itself in Europe with countless deaths
Considering this theoretical and contextual framework, the present study aims to investigate psychological well-being in relation to some social dimensions during the initial quarantine period that the Italian population had to cope with
The methodology used is quantitative, and the protocol is based on previous studies on the psychological impacts of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and influenza outbreaks (Rubin et al, 2010; Park et al, 2018; Al-Rabiaah et al, 2020), as well as on the few studies that had already been published in the psychological field relating to the COVID-19 pandemic in early March 2020 (Liu S. et al, 2020; Rajkumar, 2020; Wang C. et al, 2020)
Summary
On January 30, 2020, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 epidemic a public health emergency of international interest (World Health Organization, 2020a), this information was not disclosed by the media in the various countries but only after the situation manifested itself in Europe with countless deaths. As a result of the first outbreaks, some municipalities were immediately quarantined and subsequently restrictive measures, progressively more stringent, were extended to the entire country, not allowing the population to leave their homes if not strictly necessary and blocking all activities not related to food production. Despite these measures, Italy appears to be the third country in the world for number of positive cases and the second in the world for number of deaths (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, 2020). The government task force focused on the medical and health aspects as did the international and national scientific literature in the first articles published in the early months of 2020 on the COVID-19 pandemic (COVID Contents n. 1 of 9 April 2020; Istituto Superiore di Sanità [ISS], 2020a, COVID Contents n. 2 of 16 April, 2020, Istituto Superiore di Sanità [ISS], 2020b Study Group COVID-19, Contents n. 1 of 9 April, 2020)
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