Resilience and Mental Well-Being During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Serial Mediation by Persistent Thinking and Anxiety About Coronavirus

Sebastian B Skalski; Karol Konaszewski; Arndt Büssing; Janusz Surzykiewicz

doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2021.810274

Resilience and Mental Well-Being During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Serial Mediation by Persistent Thinking and Anxiety About Coronavirus

Front Psychiatry. 2022 Jan 27:12:810274. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2021.810274. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Sebastian B Skalski¹, Karol Konaszewski², Arndt Büssing³, Janusz Surzykiewicz^{4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland.
² Faculty of Education, University of Białystok, Białystok, Poland.
³ Professorship Quality of Life, Spirituality and Coping, Faculty of Health, Witten/Herdecke University, Witten, Germany.
⁴ Faculty of Philosophy and Education, Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, Eichstaett, Germany.
⁵ Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski University in Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland.

Abstract

Reports to date indicate that the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak has negatively impacted mental health in the general population. On the other hand, positive associations of mental resilience and well-being have been widely demonstrated. The objective of this study was to assess the links between resilience (Brief Resilience Scale), persistent thinking about COVID-19 (Obsession with COVID-19 Scale), coronavirus anxiety (Coronavirus Anxiety Scale), and well-being (World Health Organization's 5-item Well-being Index) using serial mediation. The study considered online survey data from 1,547 Poles aged 18-78 (62% of whom were women). Bootstrap sampling analysis revealed that persistent thinking about COVID-19 (M1) and coronavirus anxiety (M2) partially mediate the relationship between resilience and well-being. The results of this study indicate that persistent thinking may be dysfunctional for mental health, as it inflates pandemic anxiety and disrupts well-being. Moreover, practitioners should focus on interventions enhancing resilience in order to reduce negative mental effects during the spread of a pandemic infectious disease.

Keywords: COVID-19; anxiety; persistent thinking; resilience; well-being.