Perceived empowerment and the impact of negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the quality of life of persons with severe mental illness

Annabel Sandra Mueller-Stierlin; Friedrich Meixner; Jutta Lehle; Anne Kohlmann; Mara Schumacher; Stefanie Woehler; Anke Haensel; Sabrina Reuter; Katrin Herder; Nicole Bias; Thomas Becker; Reinhold Kilian

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0276123

Perceived empowerment and the impact of negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the quality of life of persons with severe mental illness

PLoS One. 2022 Oct 20;17(10):e0276123. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0276123. eCollection 2022.

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychiatry II, Ulm University, Günzburg, Germany.
² Department of General Practice and Primary Care, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany.
³ Department of Psychiatry, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.

Abstract

Purpose: Beyond its direct effects on physical health the COVID-19 pandemic has been shown to have negative effects on the living situation of people with severe mental illness (SMI). To date, there has been little research on resilience factors preventing people with SMI from experiencing negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The objective of this study was to investigate the role of perceived empowerment (PE) as a resilience factor, preventing people with SMI from experiencing negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on daily living.

Methods: We investigated negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on daily living in 931 persons with SMI at two times within six month between June 2020 and Mai 2021. To take into account the longitudinal structure of the data we applied mixed effects regression analyses and longitudinal path models.

Results: A majority of participants experienced negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on several dimensions of daily living. Negative effects increased with rising levels of illness-related impairment but decreased as the level of PE rose. While negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic at follow-up were negatively associated with overall subjective quality of life baseline, PE was negatively associated with the negative impact of the pandemic and positively with quality of life.

Conclusion: Patients with SMI need support to reduce negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on their quality of life. The promotion of PE could help strengthen resilience in this target group.

Trial registration: German Clinical Trial Register, DRKS00019086, registered on 3 January 2020. (https://www.drks.de/drks_web/navigate.do?navigationId=trial.HTML&TRIAL_ID=DRKS00019086).

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

COVID-19* / epidemiology
Humans
Mental Disorders* / epidemiology
Pandemics
Quality of Life

Associated data

DRKS/DRKS00019086

Grants and funding

This study and most authors (AMS, FM, JL, AK, MS, SW, AH, SR, KH, and NB) are funded by the Innovation Fund from the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA, https://innovationsfonds.g-ba.de/), grant number 01NVF18028 (GBV). The funder was not involved in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.