Risk perception, mental health distress, and flourishing during the COVID-19 pandemic in China: The role of positive and negative affect

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented disruptions to people’s everyday life and induced wide-ranging impacts on people’s physical health, mental health and well-being. This research investigated the relationship between risk perception, mental health distress, and flourishing during the peak period of the COVID-19 pandemic in China. Three hundred and ninety Chinese completed measures on risk perception, mental health distress, positive and negative affect, flourishing, and demographic information. The results revealed that 27.2% of participants experienced some level of mental health distress, but they also experienced a relatively high level of flourishing. Higher level of risk perception and negative affect were risk factors, whereas positive affect was a protective factor, of mental illness and flourishing. Experiences of positive and negative affect mediated the relationship between risk perception and level of mental health distress and flourishing, respectively. Although the COVID-19 pandemic led to a higher level of mental distress among the general public in China, most people were also resilient during the pandemic. The results have implications for improving mental health and enhancing resiliency during public health crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Risk perception, anxiety, and depression among hospital pharmacists during the COVID-19 pandemic: The mediating effect of positive and negative affect

“…By April 20, 2022, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to more than 504 million infections and more than 6.21 million deaths worldwide (Johns Hopkins University, 2021). Similar to previous pandemics of infectious diseases, such as SARS (Maunder et al, 2003) and Ebola (Lötsch et al, 2017), the COVID-19 pandemic not only caused severe threat to people's physical health but also induced wide-ranging impacts on people's mental health (Adhanom Ghebreyesus, 2020;Lai et al, 2020;Qiu et al, 2020;Unützer et al, 2020;Zhang, 2022;Zhang et al, 2022). Compared with the general public, frontline healthcare workers have a relatively higher level of risk for infection due to their close involvement in the efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic (Nguyen et al, 2020).…”

Stress mindset, proactive coping behavior, and posttraumatic growth among health care professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“…For example, Shechter and colleagues (2020) found that 61% of front-line health care workers in New York reported increased experiences of meaning and purpose in life during the COVID-19 pandemic. Research conducted during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that despite experience of mental health distress, people also experience a relatively high level of flourishing (Zhang, 2022). A survey study among nurses found that 39.3% of them experienced posttraumatic growth during the COVID-19 pandemic (Chen et al, 2021).…”

Healthy lifestyle changes and mental health of healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic in China

“…Given the ongoing world COVID-19 pandemic and the varying degrees of implementation of lockdown policies due to changes in the pandemic, this has broad and ongoing implications for improving the mental health of healthcare workers and the general public. Future research is needed to continue to develop simple and easy-to-use interventions to protect people's mental health during pandemics as well as during regular outbreak prevention and control (Zhang, 2022;Zhang et al, 2021).…”