Psychological Resilience Factors and Their Association With Weekly Stressor Reactivity During the COVID-19 Outbreak in Europe: Prospective Longitudinal Study

BACKGROUND

Cross-sectional relationships between psychosocial resilience factors (RFs) and resilience, operationalized as the outcome of low mental health reactivity to stressor exposure (low "stressor reactivity" [SR]), were reported during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

OBJECTIVE

Extending these findings, we here examined prospective relationships and weekly dynamics between the same RFs and SR in a longitudinal sample during the aftermath of the first wave in several European countries.

METHODS

Over 5 weeks of app-based assessments, participants reported weekly stressor exposure, mental health problems, RFs, and demographic data in 1 of 6 different languages. As (partly) preregistered, hypotheses were tested cross-sectionally at baseline (N=558), and longitudinally (n=200), using mixed effects models and mediation analyses.

RESULTS

RFs at baseline, including positive appraisal style (PAS), optimism (OPT), general self-efficacy (GSE), perceived good stress recovery (REC), and perceived social support (PSS), were negatively associated with SR scores, not only cross-sectionally (baseline SR scores; all P<.001) but also prospectively (average SR scores across subsequent weeks; positive appraisal (PA), P=.008; OPT, P<.001; GSE, P=.01; REC, P<.001; and PSS, P=.002). In both associations, PAS mediated the effects of PSS on SR (cross-sectionally: 95% CI -0.064 to -0.013; prospectively: 95% CI -0.074 to -0.0008). In the analyses of weekly RF-SR dynamics, the RFs PA of stressors generally and specifically related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and GSE were negatively associated with SR in a contemporaneous fashion (PA, P<.001; PAC,P=.03; and GSE, P<.001), but not in a lagged fashion (PA, P=.36; PAC, P=.52; and GSE, P=.06).

CONCLUSIONS

We identified psychological RFs that prospectively predict resilience and cofluctuate with weekly SR within individuals. These prospective results endorse that the previously reported RF-SR associations do not exclusively reflect mood congruency or other temporal bias effects. We further confirm the important role of PA in resilience.

Psycho-social factors associated with mental resilience in the Corona lockdown

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is not only a threat to physical health but is also having severe impacts on mental health. Although increases in stress-related symptomatology and other adverse psycho-social outcomes, as well as their most important risk factors have been described, hardly anything is known about potential protective factors. Resilience refers to the maintenance of mental health despite adversity. To gain mechanistic insights about the relationship between described psycho-social resilience factors and resilience specifically in the current crisis, we assessed resilience factors, exposure to Corona crisis-specific and general stressors, as well as internalizing symptoms in a cross-sectional online survey conducted in 24 languages during the most intense phase of the lockdown in Europe (22 March to 19 April) in a convenience sample of N = 15,970 adults. Resilience, as an outcome, was conceptualized as good mental health despite stressor exposure and measured as the inverse residual between actual and predicted symptom total score. Preregistered hypotheses (osf.io/r6btn) were tested with multiple regression models and mediation analyses. Results confirmed our primary hypothesis that positive appraisal style (PAS) is positively associated with resilience (p < 0.0001). The resilience factor PAS also partly mediated the positive association between perceived social support and resilience, and its association with resilience was in turn partly mediated by the ability to easily recover from stress (both p < 0.0001). In comparison with other resilience factors, good stress response recovery and positive appraisal specifically of the consequences of the Corona crisis were the strongest factors. Preregistered exploratory subgroup analyses (osf.io/thka9) showed that all tested resilience factors generalize across major socio-demographic categories. This research identifies modifiable protective factors that can be targeted by public mental health efforts in this and in future pandemics.

Parental perception of the adequacy of pain control in their child after discharge from the emergency department

OBJECTIVE

To determine how well the pain of pediatric patients who are discharged from our emergency department (ED) is managed.

DESIGN

Prospective, observational case series conducted from 9/21/96 to 3/16/97.

SETTING

University tertiary care ED with an annual pediatric census of 11,000, consisting of a diverse racial and socioeconomic population.

PATIENTS

Children ages < or = 15 years and discharged from the ED with one of the preselected acute, painful, conditions including fracture, corneal abrasion, ankle sprain with swelling, burn, otitis media with pain at discharge, or exudative pharyngitis.

STUDY PROTOCOL

At time of discharge from the ED, data collectors not involved in the patients' care obtained consent from the patient's parent or guardian and completed data collection that included the final diagnosis and any recommended analgesic. Physicians were blinded to patient enrollment. Parents were phoned 48 hours after ED discharge and asked if they believed their child's pain was adequately controlled at home and if they had sought medical care elsewhere. Data were reported as percentages, and confidence intervals (CI) were calculated.

RESULTS

From a convenience sample of 75 patients, five could not be contacted, leaving 70 for analysis. The mean age was 5.4+/-4.7 years. Sixty-seven parents (96%; 95% CI, 91-100%) believed their child's pain was well controlled, and 67 patients (96%; 95% CI, 91-100%) received an analgesic prescription. Five parents did not administer the prescribed analgesic because they believed their child's pain was controlled without it. No parent sought further medical care for pain medication for their child.

CONCLUSIONS

Our pediatric pain management study showed high analgesic use and high parental satisfaction. Lectures and bedside education may be a way to improve pain management in pediatric patients.