Post-locked down mental wellbeing among Malaysian adults: factors of life satisfaction in urban Malaysia

Abstract

Under the enforcement of the recovery movement control order (RMCO), citizens of Malaysia were allowed to commute for work with tight protocols of social distancing. In this period of time, most individuals were adjusting to the new norm after being locked down for about six weeks. With an assumption that the social dynamics could have been different from the pre-pandemic era, this study aims to investigate how mattering predicts life satisfaction among individuals who live in the urban area of western Malaysia in the aforementioned timeframe. The role of other variables, namely perceived social support (PSS), resilience, and spirituality was also investigated. Data was collected from 402 adults between 18 and 66 years of age (M=25.44) who reside in the urban areas of Malaysia. A moderated serial mediation hypothesis was tested by employing the Bootstrap method in PROCESS Macro model 92. Our findings suggested that resilience does not play a significant role in the equation due to its insignificance in predicting life satisfaction after controlling the rest of the variables.

Social support and psychological wellbeing among urbanites during the pandemic: mattering and life satisfaction

“…In another study, PSS was found to positively linked SWL, where subjects with greater PSS were found to experience less stress and have better interpersonal relationships, and reported higher SWL [9]. However, our results indicated that mattering did not significantly predict SWL and it is inconsistent with the previous studies in the same context of Malaysian urbanites amidst the outbreak [31]. It can be explained by the fact that in the Malaysian context, the prolonged social distancing enforcement had increased the levels of anxiety and depression [22], among individuals with lower levels of mattering; which lowered the impact of mattering on their SWL.…”