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Multiple forms of mass anxiety in coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic

BACKGROUND: Heightened public anxiety was observed at the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our study enriches scholarly understanding of this mass response by investigating both generic and pandemic-specific anxiety that explain preventive health behavior. METHODS: In our two-phase, mixed-metho...

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Autores principales: Cheng, Cecilia, Wang, Hsin-yi, Chan, Linus
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier B.V. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8460399/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34087629
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2021.05.034
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author Cheng, Cecilia
Wang, Hsin-yi
Chan, Linus
author_facet Cheng, Cecilia
Wang, Hsin-yi
Chan, Linus
author_sort Cheng, Cecilia
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Heightened public anxiety was observed at the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our study enriches scholarly understanding of this mass response by investigating both generic and pandemic-specific anxiety that explain preventive health behavior. METHODS: In our two-phase, mixed-methods study, pandemic-specific anxiety items elicited during the qualitative phase from March 2–8, 2020 were then tested in the quantitative phase from March 16–22, 2020. Eligible participants were U.S. or U.K. residents aged 18–65. RESULTS: Of the 1,400 participants, 52% met the criteria for moderate to severe anxiety. In addition to anxiety over possible personal COVID-19 infection, participants were also anxious about others’ health, others’ reactions (e.g., panic-buying, discrimination), societal problems (e.g., economic slowdown, healthcare system breakdown), and personal finances. The positive association between generic anxiety and hygiene practice frequency was explained by two interpersonal-oriented forms of pandemic-specific anxiety: anxiety over others’ health (b = 0•0040, 95% CI: 0•0031–0•0050) and others’ reactions (0•0031, 0•0021–0•0042). LIMITATIONS: The study was conducted with participants from developed countries at an early stage of the pandemic, and the results were not necessarily generalizable to developing countries or other stages of the pandemic. Also, hygiene practices was the sole behavior of interest, and the findings may differ for other behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: The new findings indicate the importance of adopting a nuanced approach that unveils the multifaceted nature of anxiety using a mixed-methods design. Individuals from COVID-19-affected regions experience pandemic-specific anxiety due to concerns related to not only personal but also interpersonal-oriented issues.
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spelling pubmed-84603992021-09-24 Multiple forms of mass anxiety in coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic Cheng, Cecilia Wang, Hsin-yi Chan, Linus J Affect Disord Research Paper BACKGROUND: Heightened public anxiety was observed at the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our study enriches scholarly understanding of this mass response by investigating both generic and pandemic-specific anxiety that explain preventive health behavior. METHODS: In our two-phase, mixed-methods study, pandemic-specific anxiety items elicited during the qualitative phase from March 2–8, 2020 were then tested in the quantitative phase from March 16–22, 2020. Eligible participants were U.S. or U.K. residents aged 18–65. RESULTS: Of the 1,400 participants, 52% met the criteria for moderate to severe anxiety. In addition to anxiety over possible personal COVID-19 infection, participants were also anxious about others’ health, others’ reactions (e.g., panic-buying, discrimination), societal problems (e.g., economic slowdown, healthcare system breakdown), and personal finances. The positive association between generic anxiety and hygiene practice frequency was explained by two interpersonal-oriented forms of pandemic-specific anxiety: anxiety over others’ health (b = 0•0040, 95% CI: 0•0031–0•0050) and others’ reactions (0•0031, 0•0021–0•0042). LIMITATIONS: The study was conducted with participants from developed countries at an early stage of the pandemic, and the results were not necessarily generalizable to developing countries or other stages of the pandemic. Also, hygiene practices was the sole behavior of interest, and the findings may differ for other behaviors. CONCLUSIONS: The new findings indicate the importance of adopting a nuanced approach that unveils the multifaceted nature of anxiety using a mixed-methods design. Individuals from COVID-19-affected regions experience pandemic-specific anxiety due to concerns related to not only personal but also interpersonal-oriented issues. Elsevier B.V. 2021-08-01 2021-05-27 /pmc/articles/PMC8460399/ /pubmed/34087629 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2021.05.034 Text en © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Research Paper
Cheng, Cecilia
Wang, Hsin-yi
Chan, Linus
Multiple forms of mass anxiety in coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic
title Multiple forms of mass anxiety in coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic
title_full Multiple forms of mass anxiety in coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic
title_fullStr Multiple forms of mass anxiety in coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic
title_full_unstemmed Multiple forms of mass anxiety in coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic
title_short Multiple forms of mass anxiety in coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic
title_sort multiple forms of mass anxiety in coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic
topic Research Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8460399/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34087629
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2021.05.034
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