Mental health clinicians worldwide have been expressing concerns regarding the broad psychological effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, only a few studies have thus far evaluated the degree of fear of COVID-19, partially due to the lack of validated measures. In this study we evaluated the psychometric properties of the Hebrew version of the Fear of COVID-19 scale (FCV-19S), recently developed to assess different aspects of the fear of the pandemic, in a normative population of participants in Israel. Participants (n = 639) were asked to complete the FCV-19S scale, as well as to report anxiety, depression, and stress levels using validated scales. The results a unidimensional factor structure of the FCV-19S which explained 53.71% of the variance. When forcing a two-factor structure model, the analysis revealed two factors pertaining to emotional fear reactions and symptomatic expressions of fear. Gender, sociodemographic status, chronic illness, being in an at-risk group, and having a family member dying of COVID-19 were positively associated with fear of COVID-19. The measure was associated with anxiety, stress and depression. These results suggest that the FCV-19S has good psychometric properties, and can be utilized in studies assessing the effects of the pandemic on the population's mental health.

Findings imply that mental pain tolerance may be a better indicator for suicidal behavior during adolescence than reported pain intensity.

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Background: The extensive reliance on symptoms for the study of psychotherapy is often criticized. In this study we examined whether the subjective sense of mental pain predicts psychotherapy process and outcome, above and beyond the effect of symptomatic distress. Methods: Outpatients (n = 53) treated in a psychiatric hospital completed measures of mental pain intensity and tolerance, symptomatic distress, and session climate at pretreatment and posttreatment. Multilevel modeling was utilized to assess the predictive effect of mental pain, while controlling baseline symptomatic distress. Results: Patients with high mental pain at baseline showed significant reductions in distress, while patients with low mental pain showed no significant improvement. Moreover, low mental pain and high mental pain tolerance predicted decreases in session smoothness. Conclusions: Mental pain can serve as a predictive marker for psychotherapy process and outcome, and complement the reliance on symptomatic distress in psychotherapy research.