Stress, Resilience, and Well-Being in Italian Children and Their Parents during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has forced parents and children to adopt significant changes in their daily routine, which has been a big challenge for families, with important implications for family stress. In this study, we aimed to analyze the potential risk and protective factors for parents’ and children’s well-being during a potentially traumatic event such as the COVID-19 quarantine. Specifically, we investigated parents’ and children’s well-being, parental stress, and children’s resilience. The study involved 463 Italian parents of children aged 5–17. All participants completed an online survey consisting of the Psychological General Well Being Index (PGWB) to assess parental well-being, the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) to measure children’s well-being, the Parent Stress Scale (PSS) to investigate parental stress, and the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (CYRM-R) to measure children’s resilience. The results show that confinement measures and changes in daily routine negatively affect parents’ psychological dimensions, thus exposing children to a significant risk for their well-being. Our results also detect some risk factors for psychological maladjustments, such as parental stress, lower levels of resilience in children, changes in working conditions, and parental psychological, physical, or genetic problems. In this study, we attempted to identify the personal and contextual variables involved in the psychological adjustment to the COVID-19 quarantine to identify families at risk for maladjustment and pave the way for ad hoc intervention programs intended to support them. Our data show promising results for the early detection of the determinants of families’ psychological health. It is important to focus attention on the needs of families and children—including their mental health—to mitigate the health and economic implications of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Daily Life Changes and Life Satisfaction among Korean School-Aged Children in the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Regarding children’s psychological well-being, their overall stress level increased compared to the pre-COVID-19 period. This result is in line with recent studies that reflected that children’s worsened stress level and mental health are related to the pandemic [ 42 , 43 , 44 ]. As expected, the sub-areas of children’s stress varied in significance of change.…”

“…Previous studies reported a rise in various stress responses and mental health issues during the COVID-19 pandemic [ 12 , 42 , 43 , 44 ], such as higher levels of anxiety symptoms and more prevalent clinical depression symptoms. Existing research, however, mainly focused on behavioral and emotional disorders from the mental health clinicians or pediatrics’ perspectives, resulting in limited evidence regarding children’s everyday stress level during the current pandemic.…”

Brief Research Report: The Association Between Educational Experiences and Covid-19 Pandemic-Related Variables, and Mental Health Among Children and Adolescents

“…Regarding some demographic variables, we found higher prosocial behavior among adolescent girls, similar to a study conducted in Italy ( 7 ), where they also found these results among children. Finally, a study in Germany found higher rates of all problems and symptoms assessed by SDQ among children and adolescents coming from low socioeconomic status and of parents with lower education ( 36 ).…”

How Did Italian Adolescents with Disability and Parents Deal with the COVID-19 Emergency?

“…Psychological distress related to COVID-19 has been studied in the Italian population [ 14 , 15 ], and the implications of this pandemic for the mental health of young people has been outlined [ 16 , 17 ]. Additionally, the traumatic effects on families of pandemics and of the associated disease-containment measures have been confirmed globally [ 18 , 19 ], highlighting the need to focus on the most vulnerable families [ 20 ]. However, the perspectives of families with a child with a disability are lacking.…”