Computer-assisted resilience training in HCW appears to be of significant benefit and merits further study under pandemic conditions (Maunder et al., 2010). These need to be addressed through a public health approach; psychological support to the masses may be attempted through the internet. This is more important considering that existing mental health services may become overstretched for the clinical process of diagnosing and treating these mental health issues. It is well known that humanitarian crises and disasters affect the mental health of the population and these require planning and implementation of short and long term interventions. It is known that people use various coping methods in crisis or disaster situations (Sharma and Kar, 2018) as observed in this study.
Coping Strategies and Psychological Well-Being
Social media, too, emerged as a double-edged sword—offering connection and information during isolation, but also exposing users to misinformation and harmful social comparisons that can intensify psychological strain 8,9,10. Generally, coping methods are split into adaptive approaches (e.g., social connection, relaxation) and maladaptive ones (e.g., substance use, avoidance) . The authors would like to thank the Lehigh University COVID-19 Nationwide Study Team for their assistance with this study. Along these lines, traumatic events have been shown to lead not only to stress but also to posttraumatic growth . Despite these potential limitations, our study has critical implications for future research directions. First, as the survey was conducted in August 2021 and inquired about events that occurred over the time period of 17 months (since the lockdown in March 2020), responses may have been vulnerable to recall bias.
This study also indicated an overall decline in reported physical and psychological QOL during the pandemic . The COVID-19 pandemic led to a prolonged period of stress due to its extensive adverse impacts, including increased mortality and morbidity, substantial economic challenges, heightened levels of uncertainty, and social isolation. Our study informs clinical interventions to help individuals adopt healthy behaviors to effectively manage stressors, especially large-scale, stressful events like the pandemic.
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Conversely, inadequate coping responses, including avoidance and emotional dysregulation, have been linked to higher levels of depression and anxiety (Andreo et al., 2020; Lemos et al., 2019). Convergent evidence indicates that religious practices can mitigate the effects of traumatic and challenging life events (Akanni et al., 2021; Kéri, 2024; Niu, 2024; Waila & Lindsay, 2024), and our data in Colombia suggest that faith-centered strategies were widely used and frequently combined with other responses to form complex coping patterns. The findings reveal that religious coping co-occurred to varying degrees with other strategies, such as problem-solving, emotional avoidance, and social or NEJM article on mental health challenges professional support, based on latent inter-factor correlations from an oblique confirmatory factor analysis.
- The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
- If you have a loved one in a facility that you can no longer visit because of social distancing measures, it’s normal to have conflicting — and confusing — feelings.
- You can use problem solving steps outlined above, challenge your thinking, practicing relaxation and meditation or other strategies you may have used in the past that have helped.
- Physical and mental health was found to be a significant positive predictor of life satisfaction during the pandemic .
- What problems have COVID-19 caused in your life?
This finding might be interpreted as a form of altruism during acute stress of the pandemic outbreak. This finding is consistent with work reporting increased prosocial behavior under stress21, and may be related to “tend-and-befriend”, where in response to threat humans tend to protect their close ones (tending) and seek out their social group for mutual defense (befriending)22. This pattern was consistent across genders, throughout the lifespan and was overall similar in healthcare providers compared to non-healthcare providers.
Despite this, most research on pandemic-related coping has been cross-sectional, providing only snapshots rather than tracking how coping unfolds over time. These insights suggest the need to distinguish between situational coping —responses to immediate stressors, such as those triggered by the pandemic—and habitual coping, which reflects more stable, ingrained behaviors. This underscores the need to go beyond static categorizations of coping strategies and consider how individuals’ responses may shift based on evolving circumstances and available resources.