Contreras, A. orcid.org/0000-0001-7292-8770, Butter, S. orcid.org/0000-0001-9735-9156, Granziol, U. orcid.org/0000-0002-6286-6569 et al. (15 more authors) (2024) The network structure of psychopathological and resilient responses to the pandemic: A multicountry general population study of depression and anxiety. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 37 (1). pp. 126-140. ISSN 0894-9867
Abstract
Commonly identified patterns of psychological distress in response to adverse events are characterized by resilience (i.e., little to no distress), delayed (i.e., distress that increases over time), recovery (i.e., distress followed by a gradual decrease over time), and sustained (i.e., distress remaining stable over time). This study aimed to examine these response patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic. Anxiety and depressive symptom data collected across four European countries over the first year of the pandemic were analyzed (N = 3,594). Participants were first categorized into groups based on the four described patterns. Network connectivity and symptom clustering were then estimated for each group and compared. Two thirds (63.6%) of the sample displayed a resilience pattern. The sustained distress network (16.3%) showed higher connectivity than the recovery network (10.0%) group, p = .031; however, the resilient network showed higher connectivity than the delayed network (10.1%) group, p = .016. Regarding symptom clustering, more clusters emerged in the recovery network (i.e., three) than the sustained network (i.e., two). These results replicate findings that resilience was the most common mental health pattern over the first pandemic year. Moreover, they suggest that high network connectivity may be indicative of a stable mental health response over time, whereas fewer clusters may be indicative of a sustained distress pattern. Although exploratory, the network perspective provides a useful tool for examining the complexity of psychological responses to adverse events and, if replicated, could be useful in identifying indicators of protection against or vulnerability to future psychological distress.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Authors. Journal of Traumatic Stress published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Psychology (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 23 Nov 2023 16:15 |
Last Modified: | 01 Nov 2024 11:43 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/jts.22988 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:205531 |