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Anxiety Severity, Perceived Risk of COVID-19 and Individual Functioning in Emerging Adults Facing the Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic is showing a strong impact on people in terms of uncertainty and instability it has caused in different areas of daily life. Uncertainty and instability are also emotions that characterize emerging adulthood (EA). They generate worries about the present and the future and are a...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Media S.A.
2020
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7750437/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33364996 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.567505 |
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author | Germani, Alessandro Buratta, Livia Delvecchio, Elisa Gizzi, Giulia Mazzeschi, Claudia |
author_facet | Germani, Alessandro Buratta, Livia Delvecchio, Elisa Gizzi, Giulia Mazzeschi, Claudia |
author_sort | Germani, Alessandro |
collection | PubMed |
description | The COVID-19 pandemic is showing a strong impact on people in terms of uncertainty and instability it has caused in different areas of daily life. Uncertainty and instability are also emotions that characterize emerging adulthood (EA). They generate worries about the present and the future and are a source of anxiety that impacts negatively on personal and interpersonal functioning. Anxiety seems a central effect of the pandemic and recent studies have suggested that it is linked to COVID-19 risk perception. In the present study, a sample of 1045 Italian emerging adults was collected: (1) to assess anxiety severity and perceived risk related to COVID-19 and their association and (2) to compare general health and protective factors such as attitudes about security, relationships, self-esteem, and self-efficacy across anxiety severity and perceived risk categories. The findings of this study highlighted that anxiety severity categories were distributed homogeneously across the sample and that half of the participants referred to moderate-severe anxiety. A series of analysis of variances and post hoc comparisons showed that general health and all protective factors decreased according to anxiety severity. They were higher in participants with high perceived risk, with the exception of self-efficacy. Given the challenging features of the pandemic and EA, it is crucial to monitor anxiety severity in order to prevent last longing effects on mental and physical health, as well as keeping emerging adults informed about the risks related to the pandemic. Intervention and supportive programs based on improving self-esteem and self-efficacy, as well as confidence in relationships, should be offered to emerging adults over the long term, beyond the current outbreak. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7750437 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-77504372020-12-22 Anxiety Severity, Perceived Risk of COVID-19 and Individual Functioning in Emerging Adults Facing the Pandemic Germani, Alessandro Buratta, Livia Delvecchio, Elisa Gizzi, Giulia Mazzeschi, Claudia Front Psychol Psychology The COVID-19 pandemic is showing a strong impact on people in terms of uncertainty and instability it has caused in different areas of daily life. Uncertainty and instability are also emotions that characterize emerging adulthood (EA). They generate worries about the present and the future and are a source of anxiety that impacts negatively on personal and interpersonal functioning. Anxiety seems a central effect of the pandemic and recent studies have suggested that it is linked to COVID-19 risk perception. In the present study, a sample of 1045 Italian emerging adults was collected: (1) to assess anxiety severity and perceived risk related to COVID-19 and their association and (2) to compare general health and protective factors such as attitudes about security, relationships, self-esteem, and self-efficacy across anxiety severity and perceived risk categories. The findings of this study highlighted that anxiety severity categories were distributed homogeneously across the sample and that half of the participants referred to moderate-severe anxiety. A series of analysis of variances and post hoc comparisons showed that general health and all protective factors decreased according to anxiety severity. They were higher in participants with high perceived risk, with the exception of self-efficacy. Given the challenging features of the pandemic and EA, it is crucial to monitor anxiety severity in order to prevent last longing effects on mental and physical health, as well as keeping emerging adults informed about the risks related to the pandemic. Intervention and supportive programs based on improving self-esteem and self-efficacy, as well as confidence in relationships, should be offered to emerging adults over the long term, beyond the current outbreak. Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-12-07 /pmc/articles/PMC7750437/ /pubmed/33364996 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.567505 Text en Copyright © 2020 Germani, Buratta, Delvecchio, Gizzi and Mazzeschi. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Germani, Alessandro Buratta, Livia Delvecchio, Elisa Gizzi, Giulia Mazzeschi, Claudia Anxiety Severity, Perceived Risk of COVID-19 and Individual Functioning in Emerging Adults Facing the Pandemic |
title | Anxiety Severity, Perceived Risk of COVID-19 and Individual Functioning in Emerging Adults Facing the Pandemic |
title_full | Anxiety Severity, Perceived Risk of COVID-19 and Individual Functioning in Emerging Adults Facing the Pandemic |
title_fullStr | Anxiety Severity, Perceived Risk of COVID-19 and Individual Functioning in Emerging Adults Facing the Pandemic |
title_full_unstemmed | Anxiety Severity, Perceived Risk of COVID-19 and Individual Functioning in Emerging Adults Facing the Pandemic |
title_short | Anxiety Severity, Perceived Risk of COVID-19 and Individual Functioning in Emerging Adults Facing the Pandemic |
title_sort | anxiety severity, perceived risk of covid-19 and individual functioning in emerging adults facing the pandemic |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7750437/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33364996 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.567505 |
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