Slovak parents’ mental health and socioeconomic changes during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The changes in people’s mental health have become one of the hot topics during the COVID-19 pandemic. Parents have been said to be among the most vulnerable groups in terms of the imposed anti-pandemic measures. The present paper analyzes the trends in mental health indicators in a sample of Slovak parents (N = 363) who participated in four waves of data collection over a year and a half of the COVID-19 pandemic. The mental health indicators were represented by general levels of depression and anxiety as well as COVID-related stress and anxiety. While there were only minor changes in depression and anxiety, the dynamic in COVID-related stress and especially anxiety was more noteworthy. Besides some exceptions, the results hold even after controlling for the socioeconomic situation. The gender differences in the mental health trends were found to be negligible. Overall, we observed no substantial deterioration in the mental health indicators across the four waves of the study.

Modeling the Effect of Psycho-Socio-Economic Consequences of COVID-19 on Life Satisfaction: The Role of Deviation from a Balanced Time Perspective

“…The adjusted model showed a very good fit and the regression coefficients were stable across the exploratory/confirmatory dataset.In line with bothBu and Steptoe (2020) andEurostat (2020), the results indicate that difficulty with adhering to the anti-pandemic measures was associated with greater loneliness (βs = .19 and .21), a poorer economic situation (βs = -.19 and -.22) and worsened people's contentment with the authorities' management of the pandemic situation (βs = -.21 and -.15). The assumptions regarding the impact of loneliness and the economic situation on COVID-19related stress and anxiety (see, e.g.,Duby et al, 2022;Vargová et. al, 2022) seem to be supported by the data with the relationships between these variables being medium to large in magnitude (i.e., loneliness ➔ COVID-19-related stress βs = .36 and .42, loneliness ➔ COVID-19-related anxiety βs = .32 and.…”