Massive study sheds light on the psychological consequences of COVID-19 distress among workers - PsyPost
“One year into pandemic, I was interested in whether work-related literature on COVID-19 had matured enough to warrant a meta-analysis,” explained study author William Jimenez (@WPJimenez), a PhD candidate at Old Dominion University and member of the LEAF research lab.
After presenting preliminary findings at the 2021 Work, Stress, and Health conference, I asked my doctoral advisor Dr. Ian Katz and labmate Elissa Liguori if they would be interested in helping me update the meta-analysis and prepare a manuscript for journal submission.”In these measures, those with a high level of distress agreed with statements such as “I am afraid of losing my life because of coronavirus-19” and “I felt nauseous or had stomach problems when I thought about or was exposed to information about the coronavirus.”“I think a key takeaway from the study is that COVID-19 distress has very tangible effects on employees’ well-being (related to anxiety, depression, stress),” Liguori told PsyPost.The researchers also found some evidence that certain cultural values, such as power distance, individualism, and uncertainty avoidance, influenced how COVID-19 distress affected mental health.“Although we found some evidence of moderation by country-level differences and type of COVID-19 distress measure used, we’d like to emphasize that such findings are preliminary and limited by the number of studies on which they’re based,” Jimenez noted.