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. 2021 Jan 21;11(1):67.
doi: 10.1038/s41398-020-01150-4.

Psycho-social factors associated with mental resilience in the Corona lockdown

Ilya M Veer #  1 Antje Riepenhausen #  1   2 Matthias Zerban #  3 Carolin Wackerhagen #  1 Lara M C Puhlmann #  4   5 Haakon Engen  3   6 Göran Köber  7   8 Sophie A Bögemann  9 Jeroen Weermeijer  10 Aleksandra Uściłko  11 Netali Mor  12   13 Marta A Marciniak  14   15 Adrian Dahl Askelund  6 Abbas Al-Kamel  16 Sarah Ayash  4 Giulia Barsuola  17 Vaida Bartkute-Norkuniene  18 Simone Battaglia  19 Yaryna Bobko  20 Sven Bölte  21   22   23 Paolo Cardone  4 Edita Chvojková  24 Kaja Damnjanović  25 Joana De Calheiros Velozo  10 Lena de Thurah  10 Yacila I Deza-Araujo  26   27 Annika Dimitrov  1 Kinga Farkas  28   29 Clémence Feller  30 Mary Gazea  31 Donya Gilan  4   32 Vedrana Gnjidić  33 Michal Hajduk  34   35   36 Anu P Hiekkaranta  10 Live S Hofgaard  37 Laura Ilen  30 Zuzana Kasanova  38 Mohsen Khanpour  39 Bobo Hi Po Lau  40 Dionne B Lenferink  9 Thomas B Lindhardt  41 Dávid Á Magas  29 Julian Mituniewicz  11 Laura Moreno-López  42 Sofiia Muzychka  20 Maria Ntafouli  43 Aet O'Leary  44   45 Ilenia Paparella  46 Nele Põldver  45 Aki Rintala  10   47 Natalia Robak  48 Anna M Rosická  49 Espen Røysamb  37 Siavash Sadeghi  50 Maude Schneider  30 Roma Siugzdaite  17   51 Mirta Stantić  52 Ana Teixeira  10 Ana Todorovic  52 Wendy W N Wan  53 Rolf van Dick  54 Klaus Lieb  4   32 Birgit Kleim  14   15 Erno J Hermans  9 Dorota Kobylińska  11 Talma Hendler  12   13   55   56 Harald Binder  7   8 Inez Myin-Germeys  10 Judith M C van Leeuwen #  9 Oliver Tüscher #  4   32 Kenneth S L Yuen #  3   4 Henrik Walter #  1   2 Raffael Kalisch #  57   58
Affiliations

Psycho-social factors associated with mental resilience in the Corona lockdown

Ilya M Veer et al. Transl Psychiatry. .

Abstract

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is not only a threat to physical health but is also having severe impacts on mental health. Although increases in stress-related symptomatology and other adverse psycho-social outcomes, as well as their most important risk factors have been described, hardly anything is known about potential protective factors. Resilience refers to the maintenance of mental health despite adversity. To gain mechanistic insights about the relationship between described psycho-social resilience factors and resilience specifically in the current crisis, we assessed resilience factors, exposure to Corona crisis-specific and general stressors, as well as internalizing symptoms in a cross-sectional online survey conducted in 24 languages during the most intense phase of the lockdown in Europe (22 March to 19 April) in a convenience sample of N = 15,970 adults. Resilience, as an outcome, was conceptualized as good mental health despite stressor exposure and measured as the inverse residual between actual and predicted symptom total score. Preregistered hypotheses (osf.io/r6btn) were tested with multiple regression models and mediation analyses. Results confirmed our primary hypothesis that positive appraisal style (PAS) is positively associated with resilience (p < 0.0001). The resilience factor PAS also partly mediated the positive association between perceived social support and resilience, and its association with resilience was in turn partly mediated by the ability to easily recover from stress (both p < 0.0001). In comparison with other resilience factors, good stress response recovery and positive appraisal specifically of the consequences of the Corona crisis were the strongest factors. Preregistered exploratory subgroup analyses (osf.io/thka9) showed that all tested resilience factors generalize across major socio-demographic categories. This research identifies modifiable protective factors that can be targeted by public mental health efforts in this and in future pandemics.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare to have no direct conflicts of interest related to this article. S.B. has in the last 3 years acted as an author, consultant, or lecturer for Medice and Roche. He receives royalties for text books and diagnostic tools from Hogrefe, Kohlhammer and UTB. T.H. is a chief medical scientist for GrayMatters Health Co., Haifa, Israel. R.K. receives advisory honoraria from JoyVentures, Herzlia, Israel.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Associations of hypothesized resilience factors with outcome-based resilience (RES) and mediation effects.
A Multiple regressions with covariates of resilience factors on resilience, calculated separately for each factor. Shown are the regression coefficients (β) and 99% confidence intervals (CI). Effects are similar for resilience to all stressors combined (RESC), resilience to general (RESG), and resilience to Corona-specific stressors (RESS). Resilience factors: PAS, positive appraisal style; PSS, perceived social support; CSS, perceived increase in social support during the Corona crisis; OPT, optimism; GSE, perceived general self-efficacy; REC, perceived good stress recovery; NEU, neuroticism; BCS, behavioral coping style; PAC, positive appraisal specifically of the Corona crisis. B Mediation analyses testing if the positive association of PSS with RESC is mediated by PAS (top) and if the positive association of PAS on RESC is mediated by REC (bottom). Shown are β of all paths. Indirect path a × b: β with 99% CI. ***p < 0.0001.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2. Combined multi-variable analysis (LASSO) of the relative associations of resilience factors and covariates with resilience (RESC).
To identify the strongest of the partly correlated resilience factors, sparse regression was performed with an optimal penalty term λ (vertical broken line), as determined by cross-validation. Resilience factors are indicated in color, covariates in gray. The initial position of a curve on the y-axis signifies the association of the corresponding resilience factor or covariate with RESC in the case of very low penalization. By increasing λ (x-axis), regression coefficients (β) get increasingly drawn to zero, to leave only the strongest associations. The order of resilience factors in the color legend corresponds to their determined relative strengths (absolute values) at optimal λ (broken line). Except for BCS (behavioral coping style), all resilience factors were selected in all 800 repeated LASSO runs, indicating strong replication stability.

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