Psychological predictors of coronavirus-related anxiety in Iranian young adults

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of psychology,Salman Farsi University of Kazerun

2 Department of Psychology, Faculty of Humanistic Science, Salman Farsi university of Kazerun, Fars, Iran.

3 Deportment of language. Salman Farsi University of Kazerun

4 Semnan university

Abstract

Aim: The sudden outbreak of Covid-19 virus in March and April 2020, sparked an emotional state of anxiety among different groups of society. The aim of the present study was to investigate the psychological predictors of coronavirus anxiety in Iranian young adults. Method: The sample included 517 women and men who responded to four electronic questionnaires which posted on the researchers' Instagram pages between March 11th and 28th 2020. The e-questionnaires included the Corona Anxiety Inventory, the Distress Tolerance Scale (DTS), Revised Health Hardiness (RHHI-24) and the Health-Promoting Lifestyle Profile (HPLP-II). Results: Data was analyzed by using multi regression method in SPSS -24. The results of regression analysis showed that tolerating emotional distress, health hardiness, and a lifestyle that promotes health can significantly predict the anxiety caused by the coronavirus pandemic. In addition, it turned out that women experience more coronavirus anxiety than their male counterparts. Discussion & Conclusion: It can be concluded that psychological variables in stressful and ambiguous situations can determine the levels of anxiety that individuals experience. Implications for these results and limitations of the present study have been discussed.

Keywords

References

Alipour, A., Ghadami, A., Alipour, Z &Abdollahzadeh, H. (2020). Preliminary validation of the Corona Disease Anxiety Scale (CDAS) in the Iranian sample. Health Psychology, 8(32):163-175.
Andrew J. Sidwell, D.E.L. (2019). Psychological Hardiness and Self-Leadership: Leading Yourself to Effective Stress Coping. International Journal of Existential Positive Psychology, 8(1):1-12.
Bartone, P. T., Hystad, S. W., Eid, J., & Brevik, J. I. (2012). Psychological hardiness and coping style as risk/resilience factors for alcohol abuse. Military medicine, 177(5), 517-524.
Blakey, S. M., &  Abramowitz, J. S. (2017). Psychological predictors of health anxiety in response to the Zika virus. Journal of Clinical Psychology in Medical Settings, 24, 270-278.
Blakey, S. M., Reuman, L., Jacoby, R. J., & Abramowitz, J. S. (2015). Tracing ‘‘Fearbola’’: Psychological predictors of anxious responding to the threat of Ebola. Cognitive Therapy Research, 39, 816-825.
Brooks, MV. (2008). Health-related hardiness in individuals with chronic illnesses.Clinical of Nurse Research,17(2),98-117.
Carnegie, R., Zheng, J., Sallis, H.M., Jones, H.J., Wade, K.H., Evans, J., Zammit, S., Munafo, ` M.R., Martin, R.M. (2020). Mendelian randomization for nutritional psychiatry. The Lancet Psychiatry, 7 (2), 208–216.
Di Nicola M, Dattoli L, Moccia L, Pepe M, Janiri D, Fiorillo A. (2020). Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels and psychological distress symptoms in patients with affective disorders during the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychoneuroendocrinology. 10, 48-69.
Fischhoff, B. (2020). Speaking of Psychology: Coronavirus Anxiety. In: https://www.apa.org/research/action/speaking-of-
psychology/coronavirus-anxiety.
Gebhart, WA., Van der Doef, MP., & Paul, LB. (2001). The Revised Health Hardiness Inventory (RHHI24): Psychometric properties and relationship with self-reported health and health behavior in two Dutch samples. Health Education Research, 16,579-592.
Groves N.J., Zhou M., Jhaveri D.J., McGrath J.J., Burne T.H.J. (2017). Adult vitamin D deficiency exacerbates impairments caused by social stress in BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 86, 53–63.
Hall, R. C., Hall, R. C., & Chapman, M. J. (2008). The 1995 Kikwit Ebola outbreak: lessons hospitals and physicians can apply to future viral epidemics. General hospital psychiatry, 30(5), 446-452.
Holshue M. L, DeBolt C., Lindquist S., Lofy, K. H., Wiesman, J., Bruce, H., & Diaz, G.. (2020). First case of 2019 novel coronavirus in the United States. New England Journal of Medicine. published online Jan 31.
Horwitz, E. (2001). Language anxiety and achievement. Annual review of applied linguistics, 21, 112-126.
Horwitz, E. K., Horwitz, M. B., & Cope, J. (1986). Foreign language classroom anxiety. The modern language journal, 70(2), 125-132.
Huang, C., Wang, Y., Li, X., Ren, L., Zhao, J., Hu, Y., Zhang, L., Fan, G., Xu, J., Gu, X. & Cheng, Z. (2020). Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China. The Lancet, 395(10223), 497-506.
Intrieri, R.C., Newell, C.B. (2020). Anxiety sensitivity not distress tolerance is a predictor of generalized anxiety symptoms and worry. Current Psychology. 1-11.
Kaiser, A. J., Milich, R., Lynam, D. R., & Charnigo, R. J. (2012). Negative urgency, distress tolerance, and substance abuse among college students. Addictive Behaviors, 37(10), 1075-1083.
Keough, M. E., Riccardi, C. J., Timpano, K. R., Mitchell, M. A., & Schmidt, N. B. (2010). Anxiety Symptomatology: The Association with Distress Tolerance and Anxiety Sensitivity. Behavior Therapy, 41, 567-574.
Kline, R B. (2012). Principles and practices of structural equation modeling. 3rd Ed. New York: Guilford Press.
Li, H., & Liu, Y. (2011). A brief study of reticence in an ESL class. Theory and practice in language studies, 1(8), 961-965.
Liang, L., Ren, H., Cao, R. et al. (2020). The Effect of COVID-19 on Youth Mental Health. Psychiatr Q (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-020-09744-3
MacIntyre, P. D., & Gardner, R. C. (1994). The subtle effects of language anxiety on cognitive processing in the second language. Language learning, 44(2), 283-305.
Maddi, S. R., & Harvey, R. H. (2006). Hardiness is considered across cultures. In Handbook of multicultural perspectives on stress and coping (pp. 409-426). Springer, Boston, MA.
Mahase, E. (2020). China coronavirus: WHO declares international emergency as death toll exceeds 200. BMJ Clin.Res. Ed. 368, m408.
Motlagh, Z., Mazloomi-Mahmoodabad, S. S, Mommayezi, M.(2011). STUDY OF Health-promoting behaviors among medical science university students. Zahedan Journal of Research in Medical Sciences (ZJRMS),13(4): 29-34(Text in Persian).
Nunnally, J.C., and Bernstein, I.H. (1994) The Assessment of Reliability. Psychometric Theory, 3, 248-292.
Park, H., & Lee, A. R. (2005). L2 learners' anxiety, self-confidence, and oral performance. Paper presented at the 10th Conference of Pan-Pacific Association of Applied Linguistics, Edinburgh University, conference proceedings.
Pender, N. J. (2002). Health promotion in nursing practice. USA: A.
Pollock, SE. (1999). Health-related hardiness with different ethnic populations. Holist NursPract. 13(3):1-10.
Schwarzer, R. (2013). Self-related cognitions in anxiety and motivation: Psychology Press.
Simons, J. S., & Gaher, R. M. (2005). The Distress Tolerance Scale: Development and validation of a self-report measure. Motivation and Emotion, 29(2), 83-102.
Walker, S N., Sechrit, K R.,& Pender, N J.(1987). The health-promoting lifestyle profile: development and psychometric characteristics. Nurse Research, 36, 76-81.
Wheaton, M. G., Abramowitz, J. S., Berman, N. C., Fabricant, L. E., & Olatunji, B. O. (2012). Psychological predictors of anxiety in response to the H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 36, 210–218.
Xie, X. F., Stone, E., Zheng, R., & Zhang, R. G. (2011). The ‘Typhoon Eye Effect’: determinants of distress during the SARS epidemic. Journal of Risk Research, 14 (9), 1091-1107.
Zvolensky, M. J., Vujanovic, A. A., Bernstein, A., & Leyro, T. (2010). Distress tolerance: Theory, measurement, and relations to psychopathology, Current Directions in Psychological Science, 19(6): 406-410.
Preventive Counseling
Volume 3, Issue 3
October 2022
Pages 16-28

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics