Relationship between Depressive Symptoms and Stress in individuals with infectious history of COVID-19: Mediating Effect of purpose in life

Abstract

Background: Corona Virus Disease 2019 (CVID-19) is spreading across the world and the epidemic is also a great stress event for individuals which may trigger lots of mental health issue. This study aims to investigate the relationship between depressive symptoms and stress in individuals with infectious history of COVID-19 in Wuhan and the mediating effect of purpose in life.Method: A total of 128 individuals with infectious history of COVID-19 who were discharged from designated hospital and furtherly accepted health management of 14-day rehabilitation, isolation and medical observation at Qingshan District Rehabilitation Station in Wuhan were selected for the testing of Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D), Impact of Event Scale (IES) and purpose-in-life test (PLT).Results: The depressive emotion, somatic symptoms and total score of CES-D in male group were significantly lower than that of in female participants (P＜0.001). The total score of CES-D was negatively correlated with all factors of PLT and positively correlated with all factors in IES (P＜0.05 or 0.01). The feeling of life, life goal, intrusiveness and awareness had significant predictive effects on the total score of CES-D(P＜0.05 or 0.01), which could explain 69.3% of variations in the total score of CES-D. The purpose in life played a partial mediating effect between the stress and depressive symptoms in individuals with infectious history of COVID-19, and the mediating effect accounted for 13.33% of the total effect.Conclusions: The females with infectious history of COVID-19 had more severe symptoms of depression. The stress of COVID-19 infectious history had predictive effect on depressive symptoms and purpose in life was mediator between stress and depressive symptoms.