Anxiety and COVID-19

COVID-19, attentional bias, and trait anxiety

Anxious individuals selectively attend to threatening information, but it remains unclear whether attentional bias can be generalized to traumatic events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous studies suggested that specific threats related to personal experiences can elicit more substantial attentional bias than general threats. The current study investigated the relationship between content-specific attentional bias and […]

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Effects of Music Combined With Sports Games on Alleviating Psychological Stress, Anxiety and Mental Energy Among Adolescents During COVID-19 Pandemic in Lanzhou Gansu Province China

Conditions:   Stress;   Anxiety and FearInterventions:   Behavioral: Music intervention only;   Behavioral: Sports games intervention only;   Behavioral: Music and sports games interventionSponsor:   Wu JiarunCompleted

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anxiety depression COVID-19 Dr Jonathan Haverkampf

Discover How Anxiety and Depression Affect Long COVID

Did you know that anxiety and depression might be playing a role for some people with long COVID? That’s what researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) found in their study. They discovered that patients who experienced difficulties with thinking during COVID-19 infection also tended to have lingering physical symptoms more frequently than

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Sex and gender role differences on stress, depression, and anxiety symptoms in response to the COVID-19 pandemic over time

IntroductionStress, depression, and anxiety symptoms have been reported during the pandemic, with important inter-individual differences. Past cross-sectional studies have found that sex and gender roles may contribute to the modulation of one’s vulnerability to develop such symptoms. This longitudinal study aimed to examine the interaction of sex and psychological gender roles on stress, depression, and anxiety symptoms in adults during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsFollowing the confinement measures in March 2020 in Montreal, stress, depression, and anxiety symptoms were assessed every 3 months (from June 2020 to March 2021) with the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale among 103 females and 50 males. Femininity and masculinity scores were assessed with the Bem Sex Role Inventory before the pandemic and were added as predictors along with time, sex, and the interactions between these variables using linear mixed models.ResultsWe observed similar levels of depressive symptoms between males and females, but higher levels of stress and anxious symptoms in females. No effects of sex and gender roles on depressive symptoms were found. For stress and anxiety, an interaction between time, femininity, and sex was found. At the beginning of the pandemic, females with high femininity had more stress symptoms than males with high femininity, whereas females with low femininity had more anxiety symptoms 1 year after the confinement measures compared to males with low femininity.DiscussionThese findings suggest that sex differences and psychological gender roles contribute to heterogeneous patterns of stress and anxiety symptoms over time in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

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anxiety panic attack fear treatment help OCD phobia psychotherapy psychiatry Dr Jonathan Haverkampf

Keeping Health Care Workers Healthy During COVID-19: Exploring the Link Between Fear, Resilience, and Psychological Distress

This study found that incorporating the Fear of Covid Scale (FCV-19S) and the 14-item Resilience Scale (RS14) into the analysis revealed interesting insights. When FCV-19S was included, it was associated with psychological distress, but job titles were not. However, when RS14 was considered, resilience was protective! Additionally, physicians showed lower FCV-19S scores, while nurses and

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How Online Schooling Worries Affect Children’s Anxiety During Lockdown in Ireland: Insights from Parents and Kids

The COVID-19 pandemic has persisted as a worrying time for children who have been using technology for online schooling during lockdown and their parents. This study investigates the extent of children’s and parents’ self-reported worries associated with children’s anxiety during lockdown in Ireland. Data for 461 children and 461 parents were analyzed from the Ireland dataset obtained as part of the Kids’ Digital Lives in COVID-19 Times (KiDiCoTi) international survey. Children reported worries about keeping up with school activities online, getting poor grades, and completing their schoolwork online. Parents reported worries about COVID-19 having a negative influence on their children’s education and their children being exposed to more online risks. Children’s worries about school explained much of the variance of their anxiety to a significant degree, whereas parents’ worries explained that variance to a lesser extent. Implications of these results are discussed in the article.

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Relationship between depression, anxiety, stress, and SARS-CoV-2 infection: a longitudinal study

ObjectivesWe aimed to (1) describe the course of the emotional burden (i.e., depression, anxiety, and stress) in a general population sample during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and 2021 and (2) explore the association between emotional burden and a serologically proven infection with SARS-CoV-2.Study designThis longitudinal study involved a sample of community-dwelling persons aged ≥14 years from the general population of South Tyrol (Province of Bolzano-Bozen, Northern Italy). Data were collected at two stages over a 1-year period in 2020 and 2021.MethodsPersons were invited to participate in a survey on socio-demographic, health-related and psychosocial variables (e.g., age, chronic diseases, Depression Anxiety Stress Scale, DASS-21), as well as in the serological testing for of SARS-CoV-2-specific immunoglobulins.ResultsIn 2020, 855 (23.8%) out of 3,600 persons participated; in 2021, 305 (35.7%) out of 855 were tested again. We observed a statistically significant decrease in mean DASS-21 scores for depression, stress, and total scores between 2020 and 2021, yet not for anxiety. Persons with a confirmed SARS-CoV-2-infection between the first and second data collection exhibited increased emotional burden compared to those without SARS-CoV-2-infection. The odds of participants with a self-reported diagnosis of mental disorder for future infection with SARS-CoV-2 was almost four times higher than that of participants without mental disorders (OR:3.75; 95%CI:1.79-7.83).ConclusionOur findings support to the hypothesis of a psycho-neuroendocrine-immune interplay in COVID-19. Further research is necessary to explore the mechanisms underlying the interplay between mental health and SARS-CoV-2 infections.

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The effects of the pandemic on mental health in persons with and without a psychiatric history

Background
Prospective studies are needed to assess the influence of pre-pandemic risk factors on mental health outcomes following the COVID-19 pandemic. From direct interviews prior to (T1), and then in the same individuals after the pandemic onset (T2), we assessed the influence of personal psychiatric history on changes in symptoms and wellbeing.

Methods
Two hundred and four (19–69 years/117 female) individuals from a multigenerational family study were followed clinically up to T1. Psychiatric symptom changes (T1-to-T2), their association with lifetime psychiatric history (no, only-past, and recent psychiatric history), and pandemic-specific worries were investigated.

Results
At T2 relative to T1, participants with recent psychopathology (in the last 2 years) had significantly fewer depressive (mean, M = 41.7 v. 47.6) and traumatic symptoms (M = 6.6 v. 8.1, p < 0.001), while those with no and only-past psychiatric history had decreased wellbeing (M = 22.6 v. 25.0, p < 0.01). Three pandemic-related worry factors were identified: Illness/death, Financial, and Social isolation. Individuals with recent psychiatric history had greater Illness/death and Financial worries than the no/only-past groups, but these worries were unrelated to depression at T2. Among individuals with no/only-past history, Illness/death worries predicted increased T2 depression [B = 0.6(0.3), p < 0.05]. Conclusions As recent psychiatric history was not associated with increased depression or anxiety during the pandemic, new groups of previously unaffected persons might contribute to the increased pandemic-related depression and anxiety rates reported. These individuals likely represent incident cases that are first detected in primary care and other non-specialty clinical settings. Such settings may be useful for monitoring future illness among newly at-risk individuals.

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Lessons in Stress Reduction

A new free online course has been launched to try and reduce the stress of the nation during the Covid-19 pandemic. Members of the Irish Society of Alexander Technique Teachers (ISATT) are to offer hundreds of hours of free training online to help people deal with the tidal wave of stress caused by Covid. ISATT […]

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