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Conspiracy theories about COVID-19 began to emerge immediately after the first news about the disease and threaten to prolong the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic by limiting people’s willingness of receiving a life-saving vaccine. In this context, this study aimed to explore the variation of conspiracy beliefs regarding COVID-19 and the vaccine against it in 5779 people living in 13 Latin American countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela) according to sociodemographic variables such as gender, age, educational level and source of information about COVID-19. The study was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic between September 15 and October 25, 2021. The Spanish-language COVID-19 Vaccine Conspiracy Beliefs Scale (ECCV-COVID) and a sociodemographic survey were used. The results indicate that, in most countries, women, people with a lower educational level and those who receive information about the vaccine and COVID-19 from family/friends are more supportive of conspiracy ideas regarding the COVID-19 vaccine. In the case of age, the results vary by country. The analysis of the responses to each of the questions of the ECCV-COVID reveals that, in general, the countries evaluated are mostly in some degree of disagreement or indecision regarding conspiratorial beliefs about COVID-19 vaccines. The findings could help open further study which could support prevention and treatment efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Marco Teórico. La adolescencia supone una etapa crucial en el desarrollo humano, producto de cambios biopsicosociales, que impactaran a futuro la salud mental. El objetivo es identificar la relación que guardan la afectividad, las dificultades de regulación emocional y el estrés en la salud mental en una muestra de adolescentes de bachillerato del Ecuador. Método. Estudio de tipo descriptivo, correlacional, comparativo por género y de corte transversal, con las pruebas de Afectos Positivos y Negativos, de Dificultades en la Regulación Emocional, de Salud General de Goldberg y de Estrés Percibido. Participantes. Se contó con 1.154 adolescentes procedentes de 21 ciudades del Ecuador (67,7% son mujeres y el 32,3% restante hombres). Con edades entre los 14 a los 19 años (M= 15,69 años; DT =1.06). Resultados. Hay niveles moderadamente elevados en estrés, somatización, ansiedad e insomnio y disfunción social. Existen diferencias (p< .05) por género en las dificultades desregulación emocional, estrés y somatización, con mayor presencia en mujeres que en hombre. Se confirma la relación de los afectos negativos, las dificultades de regulación emocional y el estrés con los problemas en salud mental. Conclusión. El impacto de las emociones y el estrés en el contexto de la pandemia actual es significativo en la salud mental de los adolescentes.

The present study examined how conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19 vaccines specifically relate to symptoms of fear of COVID-19 in a sample of four South American countries. A total of 1785 people from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru participated, responding to a sociodemographic survey, the Fear of COVID-19 scale (FCV-19 S) and the Vaccine Conspiracy Beliefs Scale-COVID-19 (VCBS-COVID-19). Network analysis identified the most important symptoms of fear and conspiracy beliefs about COVID-19 vaccines (nodes) and the associations between them (edges). In addition, the robustness of the network of these indicators of centrality and the possible differences in the structure and connectivity of the networks between the four countries were evaluated. The results suggest that the nodes with the highest centrality were items 2 and 5 of the FCV-19 S and item 2 of the VCBS-COVID-19. Likewise, item 6 is the belief that most predicts conspiracy beliefs about vaccines against COVID-19; while item 6 was the symptom that most predicts fear of COVID-19. The findings strongly support cross-cultural similarities in the networks across the four countries rather than differences. Although it was expected that a higher presence of symptoms of fear of COVID-19 may lead people to compensate for their fear by believing in conspiratorial ideas about vaccines and, consequently, rejecting the COVID-19 vaccine, the results do not clearly show this relationship. This could lead other researchers to generate evidence to explain the differences between Latin American countries and countries in other contexts in terms of vaccination rates. This evidence could be useful to develop policies favoring vaccination against COVID-19 that are more contextualized to the Latin American region, characterized by social instability and economic recession during the pandemic.

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