The Fear of Contagion and the Attitude Toward the Restrictive Measures Imposed to Face COVID-19 in Italy: The Psychological Consequences Caused by the Pandemic One Year After It Began

COVID-19 Pandemic: What We Have Learned on Stress, Technology Use, and Psychological Health Among University Students

Nowadays, the medical COVID-19 emergency is ending worldwide, whereas there is an increasing need to understand the marks and the lessons learned from over two years of unprecedented changes in all life domains. Recent research has highlighted growing rates of psychological suffering among the general population as well as among university students, who were yet well-recognized as a vulnerable population even before the pandemic. The present work drives from university students' experience, and it aims to provide an overview of the key dimensions to take into account, in terms of main risks, changes, challenges, and resources, to develop updated tailored research and interventions promoting psychological health conditions in the current time within and beyond the educational context/university students' population. Implications for research and interventions are highlighted and discussed.

Intervening on Global Emergencies: The Value of Human Interactions for People's Health

Literature about global emergencies and their impact on people's health underlines the need to improve the social cohesion of human community and the availability of tools to support people and foster community interactions. This paper illustrates research aimed at describing and measuring human interactions in the Veneto community and its changing during the COVID-19 pandemic. 50,000 text occurrences from social media and newspapers about these topics were analyzed between December 2021 and January 2022. People present themselves as members of different teams, pursuing conflicting aims, and attributing the decision-making responsibility of emergencies management exclusively to governments, without considering themselves as active parts of the community. This delegation process on citizens' behalf can affect their health: by taking minor responsibility in handling the repercussions of these events on the community and by arguing over the most effective way to deal with them, they risk freezing and waiting for action by third parties, thus leaving mutual interactions and the promotion of their own health at a standstill. Local institutions can use these data to shape prevention policies to manage the community's emergencies and use them as opportunities to promote public health.

Risk perception of COVID-19 and its related factors among centralized medical isolation groups in China

Objective

Medical isolation is one of the most effective measures to slow the spread of the virus when dealing with a pandemic. Millions of people in China have undergone centralized medical isolation (CMI) during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to assess the centralized medical isolation group's COVID-19 risk perception and to explore the influencing factors.

Methods

A total of 400 participants (200 who had experienced CMI and 200 who had not experienced) completed a questionnaire related to COVID-19 risk perceptions. The questionnaire was designed with the Cognitive-Experiential Self-Theory (CEST) and the Common Sense Model of Risk Perception (CSM). It adopted nine questions to measure risk perception in terms of Emotional feelings, Cognitive judgment, and Mental representation of unusual severity. Descriptive statistical analysis, correlation analysis, and multiple linear regression analysis were conducted with SPSS 26.0 software.

Results

The mean risk perception score for the CMI group was 30.75, with a standard deviation of 7.503, which was significantly higher than that in the non-centralized medical isolation (NCMI) group (risk perception score was 28.2, and the standard deviation was 7.129). The results show that risk perceptions were higher for older age, risk perceptions were higher for higher education, risk perceptions were higher for those who had received the COVID-19 vaccination, and risk perceptions were higher for those who lived in a family with children.

Conclusion

Risk perception is significantly higher in CMI groups than in NCMI groups. The government should draw more care to the risk perception and psychological wellbeing of the CMI group and provide extra support and assistance to the elderly and those raising younger children. In dealing with future pandemics like the COVID-19 outbreak, the government should actively guide the public to properly isolate at home and cautiously implement a CMI policy.

Stigmatization profiles and psychological distress in people at high risk of infection with COVID-19 -A study conducted in Germany from March to August 2021

COVID-19-related stigmatization of affected people or people at risk of infection has been shown to enhance the reluctance of affected individuals to use health services and reduce their mental health. It is thus highly important to gain a thorough understanding of COVID-19-related stigmatization. The present study's first aim was to explore stigmatization profiles of experienced stigmatization (anticipated stigmatization, internalized stigmatization, enacted stigmatization, disclosure concerns) and stigmatization practices in 371 German people at high risk of infection using latent class analyses. The second aim was to investigate the relationship between stigmatization profiles and psychological distress via multiple regression analysis taking into account other possible negative and positive risk factors. Our results showed two stigmatization profiles: "high stigmatization group" and "low stigmatization group". Belonging to the "high stigmatization group" was significantly correlated with higher levels of psychological distress. Other risk factors significantly related to psychological distress were mental health disorders in the past, exposure to COVID-19, fear related to COVID-19, perceived risk of being infected, lower perceived self-efficacy, and lower subjective knowledge about COVID-19.

Climate Changes, Natural Resources Depletion, COVID-19 Pandemic, and Russian-Ukrainian War: What Is the Impact on Habits Change and Mental Health?

Climate Change, Natural Resources Depletion, COVID-19, and Wars are some of the great challenges of our time. The consequences will affect psychological well-being and could have a harmful impact on mental health. This study aimed to assess the level of preoccupation and fears surrounding issues of the 21st-century and the implication for psychological well-being of the general population from Central/Southern Italy among different age groups. A questionnaire that included sociodemographic characteristics, topics formulated ad-hoc about preoccupation, fears, habits, and willingness to change habits in the future related to the 21st-century challenges, and the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales 21 (DASS-21) was administered online. A sample of 1831 participants (61% F; mean age 47.71 ± 17.30) was obtained. Results showed that young adults and older adults, respectively, reported greater and less psychological well-being. Young adults reported higher scores for preoccupation, changing habits, and willingness to change habits in the future, while older adults reported the lowest scores except for changing habits, also controlling for gender. Results for this variable, as well as correlations between the many variables described, rely on the specificity of age, and 21st-century challenges. Moreover, the main fears related to the 21st-century concerns were different based on both age and gender. In conclusion, the various stresses of the 21st-century discussed in this study have a relationship with personal well-being, and it is important to consider potential global mental health issues resulting from these stressors.

The Psychological Well-Being and Civic Engagement of Polish, Croatian and Lithuanian Academic Students during COVID-19 Outbreak

The aim of this research was to recognize the relationship between well-being and civic engagement under the difficult circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic amongst students from Poland, Lithuania and Croatia. Overall, 1362 academic students (Poland, n = 596, Croatia, n = 386, and Lithuania, n = 379) participated in the study. Mean rank differences in civic engagement level (overall CE) were analysed by levels of psychological well-being (overall PWB and its subscales) using the Kruskal-Wallis test (one-way ANOVA on ranks). We conducted post hoc analysis with Bonferroni tests to measure the significance of differences in CE between the detailed levels of PWB. To avoid biases due to interaction effects between dependent variables, the analysis of mean ranks was followed by a binomial logistic regression analysis model and subgroups analysis (by gender and by country). Results obtained showed that students with higher levels of psychological well-being have higher levels of civic engagement. The differences in the CE level are most pronounced in relation to the dimension of a PWB, such as "positive relations with others", followed by "personal growth", "autonomy", and "self-acceptance". In a crisis, such as a pandemic, it is worth encouraging students to take targeted actions, as well as to create actions referring to personal development and relationships. There were no differences in the direction and shape of the associations between psychological well-being and civic engagement with respect to the country and the gender of the participants, which leads us to draw conclusions pointing to the globalised nature of student experience during the pandemic in this part of Europe.

Enhancing empowerment in young adults during the COVID-19 era in Italy through the Photovoice technique

The spread of COVID-19 has led to increasingly stringent containment measures. After the first period of lockdown, there has been an easing of measures worldwide. However, this choice has helped bring about a second wave to be faced by many states. The present research was conducting during the period in which it was necessary for the population to find strategies for living with COVID-19. The proposed action research envisaged the use of Photovoice and, due to social distancing, was carried out online. A total of 250 young adults were involved with the aim of bringing out individual and community solutions for effective coexistence with COVID-19. The data, collected through a triangulation process, were analysed on the basis of grounded theory and the support of NVivo 12. The results highlight how online Photovoice is an effective tool for implementing individual and community empowerment and for identifying solutions to live with COVID-19.

Tweet topics and sentiments relating to distance learning among Italian Twitter users

The outbreak of COVID-19 forced a dramatic shift in education, from in-person learning to an increased use of distance learning over the past 2 years. Opinions and sentiments regarding this switch from traditional to remote classes can be tracked in real time in microblog messages promptly shared by Twitter users, who constitute a large and ever-increasing number of individuals today. Given this framework, the present study aims to investigate sentiments and topics related to distance learning in Italy from March 2020 to November 2021. A two-step sentiment analysis was performed using the VADER model and the syuzhet package to understand the overall sentiments and emotions. A dynamic latent Dirichlet allocation model (DLDA) was built to identify commonly discussed topics in tweets and their evolution over time. The results show a modest majority of negative opinions, which shifted over time until the trend reversed. Among the eight emotions of the syuzhet package, 'trust' was the most positive emotion observed in the tweets, while 'fear' and 'sadness' were the top negative emotions. Our analysis also identified three topics: (1) requests for support measures for distance learning, (2) concerns about distance learning and its application, and (3) anxiety about the government decrees introducing the red zones and the corresponding restrictions. People's attitudes changed over time. The concerns about distance learning and its future applications (topic 2) gained importance in the latter stages of 2021, while the first and third topics, which were ranked highly at first, started a steep descent in the last part of the period. The results indicate that even if current distance learning ends, the Italian people are concerned that any new emergency will bring distance learning back into use again.