Has loneliness and poor resilient coping influenced the magnitude of psychological distress among apparently healthy Indian adults during the lockdown? Evidence from a rapid online nation-wide cross-sectional survey

Abstract

Background The burden of psychological distress is increasing with the spread of the pandemic and also with the enforcement of its containment measures. The aim of this research was to determine the proportion of self-reported psychological distress, loneliness and degrees of resilient coping, and to also investigate the relationship of loneliness, coping and other variables with psychological distress among apparently healthy Indians during nation-wide lockdown period. Methods A cross-sectional, region-stratified survey using pre-designed pre-tested Google form disseminated via different social media platforms was conducted. A total of 1249 responses were analysed all over India. The form enquired about Socio-demographic profile, awareness on COVID pandemic and cases in the surroundings. UCLA Loneliness scale, Brief resilience and coping scale (BRCS) and Psychological distress scale (K6) assessed self-reported loneliness, coping and psychological distress, respectively. Special regressor technique adjusting for endogeneity and heteroskedasticity was used to extract the average marginal effects. Results Majority of the respondents were 18–35 years old, male, single and urban residents. News media, social media mostly acted as sources of information regarding COVID related news. Overall, 54.47% (95% CI: 51.39–57.53%) and 38.39% (95% CI: 35.57–41.29%) were reported to be lonely and had low resilient coping ability respectively. Around 44.68% had high risk of developing psychological distress. Being a student (average marginal effect coefficient (AMECoef).: -0.07, 95% CI: [-0.12, -0.01]) and perceiving lockdown as an effective measure (AMECoef: -0.11, 95% CI: [-0.19, -0.03]) were protective against psychological distress. Psychological distress was associated with male respondents (AMECoef 0.07, 95% CI: [0.02, 0.11]), low or medium resilient copers (AMECoef 0.89, 95% CI: [0.17, 1.61]), and perceiving a serious impact of social distancing measures (AMECoef 0.17, 95% CI: [0.09, 0.26]). Conclusions Psychological distress among Indian population during lockdown was prevalent. Poor coping ability and perceiving social distancing to have a serious impact was found to be significantly contributing to psychological distress. Appropriate measures to address these issues would be beneficial for the community mental health.

Emotional distress in the early stages of the COVID-19 related lockdowns depending on the severity of the pandemic and emergency measures: a comparative online-survey in Germany, Austria and Italy

“…for China see [2]. These 600 publications do not only comprise country-specific studies, on countries like Italy [3][4][5], Spain [6], Nepal [7], China [8], Africa [9], and India [10], but also cross-sectional studies accounting for mental impacts on the overall population e.g. [11,12] as well as on specific socio-demographic groups such as students [13], vulnerable groups like the elderly [14] and doctors (e.g.…”

Interactions with COVID-19 content on social media: Outcomes of social media use on student KAPs

“…Following with this, half of the sample saw COVID-19 news on social media as worrying, which the researchers point to as one stressor that can explain the trend of declining mental health during the pandemic. Lahiri et al (2021) had a similar discovery, finding in a survey of 1,249 Indian adults that those who were exposed to COVID-19 news on social media were more likely to be distressed. This possible link between mental health and social media may help explain the preventive measures that teens take, which is the focus of this study.…”

“…While at home, youth were left with social media to safely interact with others, which is a practice that is still strong up to this present study (Cauberghe et al, 2021). This raises an especially important concern of how they base their health decisions for COVID-19 on social media, since much of the existing literature has found that people use it as the predominant source of information on the disease (Aynalem et al, 2021;Campbell et al, 2021;Lahiri et al, 2021;Nemat et al, 2021;Singh & Balhara, 2021). However, none of these studies have collected information on what social media platforms were specifically used, which is problematic given that the platforms moderate COVID-19 content differently, as explained in a Harvard study by Krishnan et al (2021).…”

Resilienz

“…Im Januar 2021 ergab die Suche nach den Begriffen "mental resilience COVID" in der Literaturdatenbank PubMed.gov 25 empirische Studien, die mit Fragen zu Resilienz und mentaler Gesundheit während der Corona-Pandemie, zwischen Februar und August 2020 befasst waren. Diese Studien, zumeist umgesetzt über querschnittliche Online-Umfragen, umfassten zusammen insgesamt über 76000 Teilnehmende und wurden in China und anderen asiatischen Ländern [31][32][33][34][35][36][37], dem Irak [38], der Türkei [39,40], Israel [41], europäischen Ländern [42][43][44][45][46][47][48], den USA [49][50][51] und Kanada [52] durchgeführt. Die folgenden Ergebnisse wurden vielfach berichtet: Depressive und Angstsymptome hatten im Vergleich zu Populationsnormen zugenommen.…”