Factors Related to Women’s Psychological Distress during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from a Two-Wave Longitudinal Study

Abstract

Background. A growing body of research has highlighted the negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on women’s mental health. Previous studies showed that women have higher levels of depression, anxiety and PTSD, and worse psychological adjustment than men, which also persisted after the earlier phase of the pandemic. This study aimed to evaluate changes in women’s psychological distress during the pandemic and to evaluate the factors that have a more significant impact in predicting women’s psychological distress. Methods. This two-wave longitudinal study (T1 = Italian first lockdown, and T2 = second phase, when the restrictive measures were eased) involved 893 women (Mage = 36.45, SD = 14.48). Participants provided demographic and health data as well as measures of psychological distress, emotion regulation processes, and ability to tolerate uncertainty. Results. No significant changes were found in women’s psychological distress between T1 and T2, i.e., during and after the first lockdown. Lower social stability status and higher maladaptive emotional coping predicted high psychological distress. Conclusions. Results showed that modifiable psychological variables play a central role in predicting distress and indicated that emotion regulation interventions might be helpful in increasing psychological resilience and mitigating the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic within the female population.

Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on psychological health in a sample of Italian adults: A three-wave longitudinal study

“…As hypothesized, being female and younger predicted psychopathological symptoms both during the lockdown phase (March 2020) and during the “second wave” of COVID-19 (November 2020). These results are in line with those previously reported regarding age and sex (female) being risk factors for mental health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., Amendola et al., 2020 ; Di Blasi et al., 2021 ; Huang and Zhao, 2020 ; Rossi et al., 2020 ). Consistent with previous evidence ( Cao et al., 2020 ; Lades et al., 2020 ; Somma et al., 2020 ), the frequency of searching for information about COVID-19 was positively correlated with psychopathological symptoms in both of the examined pandemic periods.…”

“…These results were also confirmed by the international literature (e.g., Krishnamoorthy et al., 2020 ; Wang et al., 2020 ), demonstrating that the pandemic crisis produced similar responses in the populations around the world. The reduction in psychological well-being and the increase in psychopathological symptoms observed in the current study, although not in line with a previous study conducted in a sample of Italian women ( Di Blasi et al., 2021 ), are compatible with the development of the COVID-19 pandemic. Indeed, a second wave of infection and the adoption of new societal restrictions (i.e., the creation of different “zones” in the country based on the number of infected individuals) started in November 2020.…”

Mental Health of PhD Students at Polish Universities—Before the COVID-19 Outbreak

“…In our study anxiety/insomnia parameter measured with the GHQ-B subscale (anxiety, insomnia) was higher in female students than males, lower in students of universities than students of other schools, and lower in students of human science than others. In the context of the sex of the respondents, the obtained results are consistent with the reports of other authors [23,24]. Women significantly more often complain of the experienced anxiety symptoms than men, which is probably related to their greater freedom in seeking professional medical help [25].…”

One Year on: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Lives of Freelance Orchestral Musicians in the United Kingdom

“…All the participants reported that the past year had been emotionally challenging ; to maintain their wellbeing, they had used a variety of coping strategies including support networks of family and friends , cognitive strategies , routines, and exercise and physical health . Although, after a year, they were no longer reeling from the shock of losing their much-loved livelihoods, and their distress and anxiety were generally less intense, more than two-thirds of the participants in the present study ( M = 11, L = 5, 10 women and six men) described some extremely emotionally challenging periods, reflecting the recent finding that women experienced greater psychological distress during the pandemic ( Di Blasi et al, 2021 ): “Lockdown has been the equivalent of being locked in a padded cell, so you were really shut away with your own thinking and you know, I think if there was anything that was not right in your soul, you’d find, it would start, the worm would start to eat straight through you” (M12); “I reached a point where I was really, really struggling to function at all […] on those days I’ve sat in bed because I couldn’t do anything else” (M5). Several late-career participants feared that they would not be able to resume their careers: “You put up an armouring against it just to survive, just to be able to protect yourself from the pain of it all […] you get really tired of saying ‘ hopefully we’ll be able to do it next year,’ ‘ hopefully it will be alright,’ well we said that last year!” (L6).…”