The Meaning of Living in the Time of COVID-19. A Large Sample Narrative Inquiry.

Claudia Venuleo,Tiziana Marinaci,Arianna Palmieri,Alessandro Gennaro

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.577077

Claudia Venuleo, Tiziana Marinaci + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.577077

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Abstract

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has been a sudden, disruptive event that has strained international and local response capacity and distressed local populations. Different studies have focused on potential psychological distress resulting from the rupture of consolidated habits and routines related to the lockdown measures. Nevertheless, the subjective experience of individuals and the variations in the way of interpreting the lockdown measures remain substantially unexplored. Within the frame of Semiotic Cultural Psychosocial Theory, the study pursued two main goals: first, to explore the symbolic universes (SUs) through which Italian people represented the pandemic crisis and its meaning in their life; and second, to examine how the interpretation of the crisis varies over societal segments with different sociodemographic characteristics and specific life challenges. An online survey was available during the Italian lockdown. Respondents were asked to write a passage about the meaning of living in the time of COVID-19. A total of 1,393 questionnaires (mean = 35.47; standard deviation = 14.92; women: 64.8%; North Italy: 33%; Center Italy: 27%; South Italy: 40%) were collected. The Automated Method for Content Analysis procedure was applied to the collected texts to detect the factorial dimensions underpinning (dis)similarities in the respondents’ discourses. Such factors were interpreted as the markers of latent dimensions of meanings defining the SUs active in the sample. A set of χ2 analysis allowed exploring the association between SUs and respondents’ characteristics. Four SUs were identified, labeled “Reconsider social priorities,” “Reconsider personal priorities,” “Live with emergency,” and “Surviving a war,” characterized by the pertinentization of two extremely basic issues: what the pandemic consists of (health emergency versus turning point) and its extent and impact (daily life vs. world scenario). Significant associations were found between SUs and all the respondents’ characteristics considered (sex, age, job status, job situation during lockdown, and place of living). The findings will be discussed in light of the role of the media and institutional scenario and psychosocial conditions in mediating the representation of the pandemic and in favoring or constraining the availability of symbolic resources underpinning people’s capability to address the crisis.

Highlights

The spread of the COronaVIrus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been a sudden, disruptive event that has strained the health system and had huge repercussions both on the social and economic plane and at the individual level
In Italy—the second country worldwide after China to be massively hit by the crisis—lockdown measures were established by the Government to contain the infection rate and applied first to the so-called “red zone” (Lombardia and 14 provinces of Veneto, Emilia Romagna, Piemonte and Marche) and to the whole country (Decree of the President of the Council of Ministers, 9 March 2020)
We explore the role of respondents’ sociodemographic characteristics—such as sex, age, and job status—which we expect to be related to specific life challenges and health, social, and economic concerns—and social characteristics related to the health emergency, such as work situation during the pandemic and place of living

Summary

Introduction

The spread of the COronaVIrus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been a sudden, disruptive event that has strained the health system and had huge repercussions both on the social and economic plane and at the individual level. In Italy—the second country worldwide after China to be massively hit by the crisis (to date, as many as 238,159 reported cases and 34,514 deaths have resulted from COVID-19 in this country—Bulletin of the integrated supervision of the Istituto Superiore di Sanità, and Istituto Nazionale di Statistica, 2020, updated 19 June 2020)—lockdown measures were established by the Government to contain the infection rate and applied first to the so-called “red zone” (Lombardia and 14 provinces of Veneto, Emilia Romagna, Piemonte and Marche) and to the whole country (Decree of the President of the Council of Ministers, 9 March 2020). A recent review on studies that analyzed the psychological impact of quarantine at the time of previous pandemics—severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Ebola virus disease, Middle East respiratory syndrome, swine flu (H1N1), and equine flu (Brooks et al, 2020)—reports symptoms such as confusion, anger, sleeping problems, and even symptoms of posttraumatic disorder (anxiety, bad memories, irritability and depression) related to the isolation and the break in routine. High degrees of social insecurity, in addition to the health hazards (Pellecchia et al, 2015), tensions within households (Di Giovanni et al, 2004), stigma, and psychosomatic distress (Lee et al, 2005), were reported with regard to previous epidemics

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