Hope During COVID-19 Lockdown

The COVID-19 pandemic has had significant psychological impact on vulnerable groups, particularly students. The present study aims to investigate the mental and psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated factors in a sample of Portuguese higher education students. An online cross-sectional study was conducted among 1522 higher education students selected by convenience sampling. The survey assessed mental health symptoms as well as sociodemographic variables, health-related perceptions, and psychological factors. Results were fitted to binary and multivariable logistic regression models. The overall prevalences of stress, anxiety, and depression were 35.7%, 36.2%, and 28.5%, respectively. Poor mental health outcomes were related with being female, having no children, living with someone with chronic disease, facing hopelessness, and lacking resilient coping. Future studies focusing on better ways to promote mental health and wellbeing among students are warranted. It is necessary to gather more evidence on the post-pandemic mental health using robust study designs and standardized assessment tools.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mental Health and Psychological Impact during COVID-19 Pandemic: An Online Survey of Portuguese Higher Education Students

Laranjeira

Dixe

Valentim

et al. 2021

“…In a cross-sectional online study that assessed 898 young adults (18–30 years old) from the U.S., 43% respondents reported high levels of depression, 45% had high anxiety scores, and 32% had high levels of PTSD symptoms. Furthermore, high levels of loneliness, high levels of COVID-19-specific worry, and low distress tolerance were significantly associated with clinical levels of depression [ 27 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Influence of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Women’s Feelings during a Hospital Stay

Kułak-Bejda

Bejda

Krajewska-Kułak

et al. 2022

Introduction: The COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) affected individuals and society and caused disruption, anxiety, stress, and loneliness. Being hospitalized during the pandemic increase a patient’s negative feelings. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on patients’ feelings (loneliness, depression, hope, self-efficacy) during a hospital stay. Materials and methods: This study included 207 women, aged from 15 to 83 years (55 ± 21.2) that were hospitalized during the pandemic in Białystok, Łomża, and Biała Podlaska, Poland at internal medicine departments. The main reasons for hospitalization were cardiovascular diseases, abdominal pain, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pneumonia, diabetes, and unknown fever. Respondents were asked to complete the following questionnaires: Sense of Loneliness (the DJGLS), Depression Beck Inventory (BDI), Basic Hope (BHI-12), and Self-Efficacy (GSES). Results: Most of the studied group of women had an average sense of loneliness. A greater sense of loneliness was found among hospitalized women living in the countryside—the lowest sense of loneliness and depression was among women with higher education and the highest sense of effectiveness. One-third of respondents had a moderate degree of depression. Of the respondents, 39% had a relatively high level of basic hope. The assessment of self-efficacy demonstrated that 52% of the respondents showed a high sense of self-efficacy, an average sense of self-efficacy was shown by 35.5% of the respondents, and a low sense of self-efficacy was shown by 12.6% of the respondents. Conclusions: Numerous hospitalized women during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite experiencing moderate depression, had an average sense of loneliness and a high level of hope and self-efficacy.

“…Posts mentioning gratitude, hope, and optimism received higher engagement levels, suggesting that users prefer these types of information during a health crisis, to improve their mental state. Accordingly, it may be essential for crisis managers, health communicators, and even regulators to explicitly explore the concepts of gratitude, hope, and optimism that not only emphasize "seeing the positive" but also help cope with social deprivation, uncertainties, difficulties, and stressful situations [23,74,75]. Communicators should be encouraged to use language that reinforces gratitude, hope, and optimism during such situations, and specific interventions should be developed to mitigate the pandemic's negative psychological impact on the general population.…”

Section: Principal Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Health Communication through Positive and Solidarity Messages Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic: Automated Content Analysis of Facebook Uses

Chang

Xian

Liu

et al. 2022

The COVID-19 outbreak has caused significant stress in our lives, which potentially increases frustration, fear, and resentful emotions. Managing stress is complex, but helps to alleviate negative psychological effects. In order to understand how the public coped with stress during the COVID-19 pandemic, we used Macao as a case study and collected 104,827 COVID-19 related posts from Facebook through data mining, from 1 January to 31 December 2020. Divominer, a big-data analysis tool supported by computational algorithm, was employed to identify themes and facilitate machine coding and analysis. A total of 60,875 positive messages were identified, with 24,790 covering positive psychological themes, such as “anti-epidemic”, “solidarity”, “hope”, “gratitude”, “optimism”, and “grit”. Messages that mentioned “anti-epidemic”, “solidarity”, and “hope” were the most prevalent, while different crisis stages, key themes and media elements had various impacts on public involvement. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first-ever study in the Chinese context that uses social media to clarify the awareness of solidarity. Positive messages are needed to empower social media users to shoulder their shared responsibility to tackle the crisis. The findings provide insights into users’ needs for improving their subjective well-being to mitigate the negative psychological impact of the pandemic.