Pandemic Emotions: The Extent, Correlates, and Mental Health Consequences of Personal and Altruistic Fear of COVID-19

Abstract

COVID-19 has had unprecedented effects on populations around the world. Given the political and moral context of the pandemic and the nation’s response to it, this study sought to assess the extent of American’s personal fear about the virus as well as their fear for others (altruistic fear), identify potential predictors of these fears, and examine the mental health impact of heightened COVID-19 fears. Overall, a majority of respondents worried about various aspects of the virus, from being exposed to dying and reported often worrying about others, including family, the elderly, and healthcare professionals. Building on the fear of crime literature, we find that certain individuals, including those who believe they are at a high risk of dying from the virus, those who closely follow news coverage of the pandemic, and those with strong moral foundations, are likely to experience elevated fear and, possibly, its consequences.

Perceived Risk and Mental Health Problems among Healthcare Professionals during COVID-19 Pandemic: Exploring the Mediating Effects of Resilience and Coronavirus Fear

“…These results are in line with earlier studies on the association between resilience and mental health (Yıldırım and Arslan 2020). The theoretical underpinning of this prediction is that excessive levels of fear related to COVID-19 may lead to poor mental health (Ahorsu et al 2020;Garfin et al 2020;Mertens et al 2020;Shigemura et al 2020;Sloan et al 2020) and that the functional characteristics of resilient individuals may facilitate better mental health by buffering the impact of fear on mental health problems in the face of adversity (Bonanno 2004;Yıldırım 2019).…”

“…Fear is conceptualised as an unpleasant emotion accompanied by excessive levels of emotive avoidance concerning particular stimuli (Perin et al 2015). While the experience of fear to some extent can be helpful for people in terms of leading them to engage in protective behaviours against COVID-19, extreme levels of fear can be detrimental to psychological and physical health (Garfin et al 2020;Sloan et al 2020) both at individual and societal levels (Mertens et al 2020).…”

“…Concerning COVID-19, although limited, prior work demonstrates significant impact of fear on psychological and behaviours change, with higher levels of mental health problems (Ahorsu et al 2020) and engagement in preventive behaviours such as social distancing and improved handwashing (Harper et al 2020). Sloan et al (2020) demonstrated that people who have high levels of personal fear of COVID-19 reported greater mental health harm while fear for others was not related with decreased mental health. In times of crisis, extreme fear and uncertainty might turn into various mental health concerns, including distress reactions (excessive fear of illness, insomnia, anger), health risk behaviours (social withdrawal, excessive use of alcohol and tobacco), mental health disorders (anxiety disorders, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, somatization), and poor perceived health (Shigemura et al 2020).…”

Changes in Healthcare Utilization, Spending, and Perceived Health during COVID–19: A Longitudinal Study from Singapore

“…[39] Similar to the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2013, [40] people's fear of the COVID-19 infection may have had strong impacts on healthcare utilization. [13,41] However, it is difficult to disentangle the relative impact of NPIs and risk avoidance behavior on healthcare utilization because they are highly correlated. Further study is warranted to predict how quickly medical utilization will rebound after the lockdown is lifted.…”

How Americans Make Sense of Two Novel Pandemics

“…But direct experience may be rare with these viruses, so communication -interpersonal or mediated -may play more important roles than experience. According to Sloan et al (2020), people experience personal (here, me) and altruistic (here, people and women) fear or concern related to media use about risk. We will examine whether talk and media use are associated with the personal and altruistic concepts differently for Zika versus COVID-19.…”