Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Oct 31;17(10):e0276841.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0276841. eCollection 2022.

Quality of life and its related psychological problems during coronavirus pandemic

Atefeh Homayuni  1 , Zahra Hosseini  2 , Nahid Shahabi  1 , Roghayeh Ezati Rad  1 , Farah Moayedi  3
Affiliations

Quality of life and its related psychological problems during coronavirus pandemic

Atefeh Homayuni et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: The prevalence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has endangered the psychological health of individuals. This study aimed to assess the quality of life and its related psychological problems during COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 559 citizens above the age of 16 years, in Isfahan and Bandar Abbas cities in Iran were selected with a convenient sampling method. An online questionnaire was used to collect the data, which consisted of five sections: demographic information, short health anxiety inventory (SHAI), perceived stress scale (PSS), world health organization quality of life questionnaire (WHOQOL-BREF) and Padua inventory. Data were analyzed using statistical tests including t-test, path analysis and structural equation modeling (SEM) using SPSS 24 and Amos 21 statistical software.

Results: A total of 559 subjects with the mean age of 37.34 ± 11.19 years participated in this study. Most of the participants were female (78.5%), married (71.6%) and employed (40.9%). The majority of them also had a bachelor's degree (42.9%). There were significant negative correlations between perceived helplessness (r = -.597, p = .000), perceived stress (r = -.715, p = .000), risk of disease (r = -.302, p = .000), negative effect of disease (r = -.424, p = .000), health anxiety (r = -.366, p = .000), contamination obsessions (r = -.187, p = .000) and washing compulsions (r = -.193, p = .000) with quality of life. On other hand, significant positive correlation was found between perceived self-efficacy (r = .665, p = .000) and quality of life.

Conclusions: According to our findings, health anxiety, perceived stress and obsessive-compulsive disorder were negatively affected psychological health during COVID-19 which in turn decreased quality of life. Therefore, we suggest considering prevention and treatment of theses psychological problems to diminish the risk of reduced quality of life during COVID-19 global pandemic crisis.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. The structural equation modeling (SEM) of the relationships between psychological variables and quality of life.
Fig 2
Fig 2. The structural equation modeling (SEM) of the relationship between perceived stress and quality of life.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Bernard I, Limonta D, Mahal LK, Hobman TC. Endothelium infection and dysregulation by SARS-CoV-2: Evidence and caveats in COVID-19. Viruses. 2021;13(1):29. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Wu Z, McGoogan JM. Characteristics of and important lessons from the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in China: summary of a report of 72 314 cases from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Jama. 2020;323(13):1239–42. doi: 10.1001/jama.2020.2648 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Moradzadeh R. The challenges and considerations of community-based preparedness at the onset of COVID-19 outbreak in Iran, 2020. Epidemiology & Infection. 2020;148. - PMC - PubMed
    1. WHO. WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Dashboard Data 2022. [cited 4 October 2022]. Available from: https://covid19.who.int/region/emro/country/ir.
    1. Alizadehfard S, Alipuor A. The path analysis model in prediction of corona phobia based on intolerance of uncertainly and health anxiety. Journal of Research in Psychological Health. 2020;14(1):16–27.