The Moderating Role of Caregiving on Fear of COVID-19 and Post-Traumatic Stress Symptoms.

José Luis Carballo,Virtudes Pérez-Jover,Sara Arteseros-Bañón,Ainhoa Coloma-Carmona

doi:10.3390/ijerph18116125

Abstract

Caregiving has been associated with increased levels of fear and post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) during COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is a lack of studies that analyze when the relationship between fear and PTSS occur, using informal caregiving as a moderator variable. To explore this moderating role, we conducted a cross-sectional online study between November 2020 and January 2021. A total of 503 men and women from the Spanish general population completed the survey. Sociodemographic and Covid-19-related data, fear of COVID-19, PTSS symptoms, and current psychological history were assessed. Prevalence of informal caregiving in the sample was 16.5%. Increased levels of fear and PTSS were found in caregivers compared to non-caregivers. Female gender and high number of COVID-19 related risk factors was also associated with fear and PTSS severity. The moderation analyses showed an interaction effect between caregiving and fear of COVID-19 when predicting PTSS symptoms. Particularly, results showed that informal caregivers reported greater PTSS symptoms, when compared to non-caregivers with same levels of fear of COVID-19. This evidence suggests that being a caregiver could increase the fear’s impact on PTSS severity in the context of pandemics. Further studies with larger samples are needed to confirm these findings.

Highlights

Several studies have analyzed the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on mental health of general and vulnerable populations—such as healthcare workers, the elderly, or chronicdisease patients [1,2,3,4,5]
Our first hypothesis assumed that higher levels of fear of COVID-19 and greater post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) symptoms will be significantly associated with female gender, younger age, lower education levels, informal caregiving, and higher number of COVID-19-related variables
We hypothesized that high levels of fear of COVID-19 will be significantly associated with greater PTSS severity

Summary

Introduction

Several studies have analyzed the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on mental health of general and vulnerable populations—such as healthcare workers, the elderly, or chronicdisease patients [1,2,3,4,5]. Fear is a common emotional response during pandemics [7,8,9,10] and it can have a positive influence on infection control measures and prevention behaviors, such as isolation compliance, mask usage, hand-washing, or social distancing [11]. As a result of this situation, previous authors found that fear of the COVID-19 and its effects is currently far greater than the negative experiences lived during this pandemic [12] These findings merit special attention, since besides its adaptive function, excessive and prolonged fear has been associated with greater risk of developing of psychopathology [15,16,17,18]

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Discussion

Conclusion