The Impact of Covid-19 Experiences and Associated Stress on Anxiety, Depression, and Functional Impairment in American A
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The Impact of Covid‑19 Experiences and Associated Stress on Anxiety, Depression, and Functional Impairment in American Adults Matthew W. Gallagher1,2 · Michael J. Zvolensky1,3 · Laura J. Long1 · Andrew H. Rogers1 · Lorra Garey1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Background The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on health and well-being worldwide and there is increasing recognition of the need to understand the psychological impact of COVID-19 experiences and stress in addition to the physical health consequences. Methods The present study examined how experiences related to COVID-19 and associated stress impact, anxiety, depression, and functional impairment in a convenience sample of 565 American adults (57.9% male) recruited through MTURK. Results COVID-19 experiences were consistently associated with higher odds of probable anxiety and depression diagnoses (ORs ≥ 3.0). COVID-19 associated stress also predicted large proportions of variance (R2 ≥ 30) in anxiety, depression, health anxiety, and functional impairment in latent variable analyses. Conclusions These findings highlight that personal experiences related to the diagnosis of COVID-19, mortality in acquaintances, and COVID-19 associated stress is associated with a greatly elevated risk of emotional disorder symptomatology and that the COVID-19 pandemic may result in increased demand for mental health services. Keywords COVD-19 · Coronavirus · Stress · Anxiety · Depression The 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has had a devastating health and economic impact on the world, with upwards of 20.5 million people infected worldwide and over 750,000 associated deaths as of August 12th, 2020 (John Hopkins University 2020). Beyond the impact on physical health, the ongoing uncertainty related to the pandemic and the dramatic changes in behavior required by social distancing efforts may uniquely and profoundly impact mental health (Gruber et al. 2020; Pfefferbaum and North 2020; Wang et al. 2020). Prevalence of anxiety and depressive disorders may increase due to exacerbated and sustained stress related to COVID-19 given the role of stress in the etiology of these disorders. There is also preliminary evidence that these symptoms and disorders may be associated with more severe * Matthew W. Gallagher [email protected] 1
Department of Psychology, University of Houston, 4849 Calhoun Rd, Rm 373, Houston, TX, USA
2
Texas Institute for Measurement Evaluation and Statistics, Houston, TX, USA
3
Department of Behavioral Science, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA
COVID-19 progression (Yao et al. 2020). Further, given that COVID-19 is on track to be a leading cause of death in 2020, the psychological impact of grief is likely to be substantial (Wallace et al. 2020). Additionally, social distancing measures, while critical to curtail disease spread, have decreased critically important social supports to help manage these increases in psychological symp
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