In it Together: Sense of Community and Psychologic Distress During COVID-19

We assessed the relationship between differences in indicators of social capital before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and their association with self-reported measures of psychological distress. The data was analyzed from an existing cluster randomized control trial (the Healthy Neighborhoods Project ) with 244 participants from New Orleans, Louisiana. Differences in self-reported scores between baseline (January 2019-March 2020) and participant’s second survey (March 20, 2020, and onwards) were calculated. Logistic regression was employed to examine the association between social capital indicators and measures of psychological distress adjusting for key covariates and controlling for residential clustering effects. Participants who reported higher than average scores for social capital indicators were significantly less likely to report increases in psychosocial distress between pre and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Those who reported higher-than-average sense of community were approximately 1.2 times less likely than those who reported lower than average sense of community scores to experience increases in psychological distress before and during the global pandemic (OR = 0.79; 95% CI = 0.70,0.88, p ≤ 0.001), even after controlling for key covariates. Findings highlight the potentially important role that community social capital and related factors may play in the health of underrepresented populations during times of major stress. Specifically, the results suggest an important role of cognitive social capital and perceptions of community membership, belonging, and influence in buffering changes of mental health distress experienced during the initial period of the COVID-19 pandemic among a population that is majority Black and female.