Risk perception, psychological effects, and social support in health care workers with COVID-19 patients in Mexico

Abstract

Objective: to identify the association between risk perception and various negative and positive psychological effects, as well as the moderating effect of social support, in a sample of health care workers with COVID-19 patients in Mexico. Methods: this study has an ex post facto and instrumental design. Responses were obtained by means of an online survey using snowball convenience sampling. The association of risk perception with various psychological outcomes was examined using monotonic correlations (Spearman, rs), and a regression model was estimated for each psychological effect to test the moderating effect of social support. Results: a total of 269 health care workers took part, 75.5% of them women. The findings show that risk perception tended to be high, especially in relation to the “risk of serious harm from SARS-CoV-2”. Social support had a moderate to high trend, and negative mental health symptoms had a trend below theoretical average points. Conclusion: social support plays a moderating role in the magnitude of the association between risk perception and psychological effects. Despite the acknowledged limitations, this work aimed to help explain the complex mechanisms of the study variables by analyzing exploratory interactions.