Two Years of COVID-19 in Austria—Exploratory Longitudinal Study of Mental Health Outcomes and Coping Behaviors in the General Population

Abstract

Since the long-term mental health impact of COVID-19 is not yet fully understood, the present study explored changes in mental health outcomes and pandemic-related coping behaviors across four pandemic stages. The main objective was to gain insights into the dynamics of mental health and coping, considering different pandemic features at different assessment waves. The final sample consisted of N = 243 adults from the Austrian general population. Data were collected at four timepoints (between June 2020 and December 2021) via LimeSurvey, an open-source online survey tool. Symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), adjustment disorder (AD), anxiety, and depression were assessed using validated instruments: Primary Care PTSD Screen for DSM-5 (PC-PTSD-5), AD-New Module 8 (ADNM-8), and Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ4). We also administered the Pandemic Coping Scale (PCS) to address pandemic-related coping behaviors. Cochran’s Q test and repeated measures ANOVAs were applied to assess changes over time. The results indicated that prevalence rates of AD (χ2(2) = 16.88, p = 0.001), depression (χ2(3) = 18.69, p < 0.001), and anxiety (χ2(3) = 19.10, p < 0.001) significantly changed across four assessment waves. Changes in mean scores of the assessed mental health outcomes were also observed. For pandemic-related coping, we found differences in the subscales: healthy lifestyle: F(3, 651) = 5.11, prevention adherence: F(2.73, 592.35) = 21.88, and joyful activities: F(3, 651) = 5.03. Taken together, our study showed a higher mental health burden in wintertime than in summertime, indicating an increased need for psychosocial support in times of stricter measures, higher incidences, and higher death rates. Furthermore, the observed decrease in adaptive coping behaviors suggests that easy-to-implement coping strategies should be actively promoted in order to maintain mental health during and in the aftermath of pandemics.

Charitable Giving in Times of Covid-19: Do Crises Forward the Better or the Worse in Individuals?

“…On the other hand, there was an increase in donations, which TMT attributes to an increased need to give meaning to one's own life and an increased orientation toward the social norms of the surrounding culture (distal defenses). About half of those that were severely mentally affected during the first months of the pandemic seem to have been able to cope with the existential threat by mid-2021 (Hettich et al, 2022 ; Lueger-Schuster et al, 2022 )—the distal defenses prevailed for them. 8…”

The Global Impact of COVID-19 on Threat Appraisals

“…We accessed Google Trends (Google Inc., Mountain View, CA, USA) using the search terms “Anxiety”, “Distress”, “Fear”, “Rumination”, “Stress” and “Worry” on 1 August 2022, within the “topic” domain (and thereby overcoming potential language barriers), setting the geographical location to “worldwide” and limiting our analysis to the past 5 years (i.e., from July 2017 to July 2022). These search terms were selected as being largely used in previous publications to define unfavorable post-COVID-19 mental health outcomes [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ]. The weekly Google Trends score for the search terms, thus, reflecting their Web popularity and probable prevalence, was downloaded into a Microsoft Excel file (Microsoft, Redmond, WA, USA).…”

“…In addition to the risk of developing severe and occasionally persistent organic derangements, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is also apparently enhancing the threat appraisals of both affected and unaffected individuals. Several recent studies, involving populations of all ages, from different geographical locations and not necessarily engaged in patient care, have, in fact, reported an enhanced burden of psychological disturbances, including anxiety and stress, namely due to concern/fear of being infected and developing acute and/or long-term unfavorable consequences of COVID-19 [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ]. Infodemiology, frequently used as a synonym of digital epidemiology, is currently regarded as a mainstay of general medical knowledge acquisition [ 9 ], as well as a potentially powerful tool to face the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic [ 10 ].…”

Adverse Effects of Sinopharm COVID-19 Vaccine among Vaccinated Medical Students and Health Care Workers

“…On 22 December 2022, the disease infected 651,918,402 people and caused 6,656,601 deaths with a case fatality rate of 1.02% [ 2 ]. Worldwide, most countries have witnessed about four waves of the deadly pandemic, and the disease caused various clinical manifestations in the general population [ 3 , 4 , 5 ]. SARS-CoV-2 is a highly contagious disease and spreads with mutable prevalence and mortality outbreak trends [ 6 , 7 ].…”