Coping strategies patterns to buffer the psychological impact of the State of Emergency in Spain during the COVID-19 pandemic’s early months

Abstract

Coping style represents the cognitive and behavioral patterns to manage particular demands appraised as taxing the resources of individuals. Studies report associations between certain coping styles and levels of adjustment of anxious symptomatology and emotional distress. The main objective of this study was to analyze behavioral co-occurrent patterns and relationships in the coping strategies used to deal with psychological distress displayed by the Spanish adult population during the first State of Emergency and lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is a cross-sectional study that uses selective methodology complemented with an indirect observational methodology, with a nomothetic/punctual/unidimensional design. We collected 996 surveys from 19 out of the 22 autonomous regions in Spain. We focused the analysis on sociodemographic variables, cumulative incidence of the COVID-19 disease and psychological distress variables. We performed two different inferential analyses: Lag sequential analysis to define the participant coping patterns, and polar coordinate analysis to study the interrelationship of the focal behavior with conditioned behaviors. We found behavioral co-occurrent patterns of coping strategies with problem avoidance being found as the coping strategy most frequently engaged by participants. Interestingly, the problem avoidance strategy was not associated with lower anxious symptomatology. By contrast, emotion-focused strategies such as express emotions and social support were associated with higher anxious symptomatology. Our findings underscore the importance of furthering our understanding of coping as a way to aid psychological distress during global public health emergencies.

Surviving the COVID-19 pandemic: An examination of adaptive coping strategies

“…For instance, a study conducted in Spain has found that focusing on certain tasks, such as "not listening to the news" or "drinking alcohol and watching TV" to avoid thinking about the situation, was the most popular mechanism (65%), while turning to social networks was a distant second (17%). Other responses, such as wishing that the situation would disappear, criticizing one's inability to cope, withdrawal, admitting one's emotions to others or self, re-engaging with the positive elements of life or making plans to allow better coping, were less commonly prioritised (Munoz-Violant et al, 2021). This particular study found that emotion-focused coping strategies were associated with higher anxiety scores, especially for people who were criticising themselves for not coping well.…”

Psychological readiness of football players for the match and its connection with self-esteem and competitive anxiety

“…Coping can be characterized as the ability of an individual to comply with conditions that currently exceed his adaptive abilities. It is an effort of a behavioral and cognitive nature that is aimed at adapting or overcoming demands that threaten or exceed the individual's resources [ [56] , [57] , [58] ]. In sports terminology, this is the ability of athletes to deal with obstacles and learn from mistakes having obsessive negative thoughts, worries, and fear of failure in football players, their ability to cope with adversity is reduced, as is their ability to learn new skills [ 1 , [3] , [4] , [5] , 7 ].…”

Factors of well-being of youth with complex medical conditions from the experience of hospitalization and convalescence: A pilot study

“…To analyze the data collected in the survey, we conducted descriptive analyses of the perception of QoL, well-being, and disease and of the participants’ coping strategies. We also performed comparisons between the cohorts and transformed qualitative data from coping strategies into quantitative data [ 79 ]. In the questionnaire, the participants were asked to write down the activities in which they engaged the most to cope with stressful situations.…”