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
. 2024 Sep;33(9):2517-2528.
doi: 10.1007/s11136-024-03700-5. Epub 2024 Jul 5.

Disabled from work and depressed: cognitive factors associated with exacerbated or attenuated depression over the COVID-19 pandemic

Carolyn E Schwartz  1   2 , Katrina Borowiec  3   4
Affiliations

Disabled from work and depressed: cognitive factors associated with exacerbated or attenuated depression over the COVID-19 pandemic

Carolyn E Schwartz et al. Qual Life Res. 2024 Sep.

Abstract

Background: People who were disabled from working reported substantially worse depression in recent research [1] despite adjustment for demographic covariates, cognitive-appraisal processes, and COVID-specific stressors, thus motivating the present work.

Objective: This study sought to "drill down" to understand employment-group differences (employed, retired, unemployed, disabled) in cognitive factors, and how these factors played into paths to depression during COVID early in the pandemic and depression trajectories over 15.5 months of follow-up.

Methods: This longitudinal cohort study (n = 771) included chronically ill and general-population samples in the United States, characterized into the same depression-trajectory groups as the earlier study [1]. The Quality-of-Life Appraisal Profilev2 Short-Form assessed cognitive-appraisal processes. COVID-specific scales assessed hardship, worry, and social support. Chi-square, Analysis of Variance, classification and regression tree, and random effects modeling investigated factors associated with reported depression over time specifically by employment group, rather than in the whole sample which was the focus of the earlier study.

Results: Disabled participants were disproportionately represented in the stably depressed trajectory group, reporting more hardship and worry, and lower social support than employed and retired participants (p < 0.0001). They were more likely to focus on health goals, problem goals, and emphasizing the negative (p < 0.001). They had different paths and cut-points to depression than employed/unemployed/retired participants. Even mild endorsement of emphasizing the negative and recent changes predicted higher depression. COVID-specific stressors and cognitive-appraisal processes were less implicated in depression among disabled participants compared to others.

Conclusions: Disabled participants were at greater risk of stable depression during the COVID pandemic. Small increases in emphasizing the negative were a path to worse depression, and disabled participants' depression may be less reactive to external circumstances or ways of thinking.

Keywords: Appraisal; COVID; Depression; Disability; Employment; Hardship; Reserve-building; Social support; Worry.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

    1. Schwartz, C. E., Borowiec, K., Li, Y., & Rapkin, B. D. (2024). Individual differences in the long-term impact of the pandemic: Moderators of COVID-related hardship, worry, and social support. Quality of Life Research, 33, 927–939. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-023-03573-0 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ammar, A., Chtourou, H., Boukhris, O., et al. (2020). COVID-19 home confinement negatively impacts social participation and life satisfaction: A worldwide multicenter study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(17), 6237. - DOI - PubMed - PMC
    1. Ammar, A., Mueller, P., Trabelsi, K., et al. (2020). Psychological consequences of COVID-19 home confinement: The ECLB-COVID19 multicenter study. PLoS ONE, 15(11), e0240204. - DOI - PubMed - PMC
    1. Banerjee, D., & Rai, M. (2020). Social isolation in Covid-19: The impact of loneliness. International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 66(6), 525–527. https://doi.org/10.1177/0020764020922269 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Ramos, A. K., Lowe, A. E., Herstein, J. J., Schwedhelm, S., Dineen, K. K., & Lowe, J. J. (2020). Invisible no more: The impact of COVID-19 on essential food production workers. Journal of agromedicine, 25(4), 378–382. - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources