SARS-CoV-2 Positive and Isolated at Home: Stress and Coping Depending on Psychological Burden

Objective: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has led to pronounced health changes, especially for those infected and psychologically burdened. This cross-sectional study examined the stress experience and coping strategies during home isolation of SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals and analyzed differences regarding psychological burden.Methods: SARS-CoV-2 infected respondents were recruited by telephone and completed an online survey during their home isolation. This questionnaire assessed sociodemographic aspects, somatic factors, psychological burden (depressive symptoms, anxiety, and somatic symptom disorder), perceived stress and coping behavior during the home isolation.Results: Out of 838 SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals during the study period, 648 were contacted and 224 home-isolated respondents were included in the study. Disgrace, social restrictions, job fear, health concerns, and infectiousness could be explored as stressors during the home isolation. Fifty-four percent experienced psychological burden. SARS-CoV-2 infected and home-isolated individuals with psychological burden perceived significant stressors more strongly (p < 0.001, r = 0.5) and coped significantly less (p < 0.001, r = 0.3) with their infection and home isolation compared to SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals without psychological burden.Conclusion: SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals with psychological burden experienced higher stressors and were unable to cope adaptively with home isolation. Therefore, a general and standardized screening procedure for psychological burden should be established. SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals with psychological burden should receive targeted support with professional help in the areas of stress experience and coping skills during their home isolation and beyond to avoid long-term consequences.

Teacher-Education Students’ Stress Experience, Coping Strategies, and Pre-Teaching Performance: A Case in a Public Higher Education Institution in the Province of Cebu, Philippines

This paper examined teacher-education students' stress experience and strategies to cope with the demands related to their pre-teaching evaluation performance. It employed a quantitative research design (descriptive-correlation) through the use of two standardized survey questionnaires, the Stress Survey Questionnaire (SSQ) and Student's Coping Scale (SCS), in collecting the needed data for inferential analysis. The respondents of this research were 135 teacher-education students of a public higher education institution in the province of Cebu, Philippines. The respondents were solicited via a purposive random sampling technique. This paper found that most teacher-education students had a very satisfactory performance relative to their pre-teaching performance evaluation. Differing from the existing literature, the respondents experienced a moderate level of stress while fairly utilizing unhealthy means to cope with the demand in school. Results further revealed that the stress experienced by respondents relates to their coping strategies. In contrast, both stress experienced and coping strategies do not relate to the pre-teaching performance of the respondents. Based on the findings and conclusion, this paper proposed an intervention plan for adoption. Received: 10 July 2021 / Accepted: 23 September 2021 / Published: 5 November 2021

Difference in stress-related indicators between employees experiencing partial and complete lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic in Pakistan

Objectives: The present study aimed to compare the stress experience of employees facing to differentiated types of lockdown situations: total vs. partial. It also aimed to identify the cognitive appraisal, coping, stress, and fear of contracting COVID-19 associated with lock down situations among employees. Method: A cross-sectional research design was employed. The sample comprises two groups (n = 490 in each group), complete lockdown (people working from home) and partial lockdown (people going to workplace), and was drawn from Pakistan using purposive sampling technique. Stress Appraisal Measure, Brief COPE Inventory, Perceived Stress Scale, and Fear of Contracting COVID-19 Questionnaire were used to measure cognitive appraisal, coping, stress, and fear, respectively.Results: Independent sample t-test showed that the threat and uncontrollable appraisal was high in people going to workplace as compared to people working from home. Results of binary logistic regression showed that people going to workplace were more likely to cope with COVID-19 situation through seeking instrumental support, behavior disengagement, acceptance, and religion as compared to people working from home. Moreover, people working from home were 0.84 times more likely to cope through emotional support than people going to workplace. Fear was found to be 1.1 times more likely associated with people going to workplace than people working from home.Conclusion: This study would help administrative authorities and government institutions in designing mental health services for working population. It would help the emergency departments in devising first aid management plan to deal with the psychological needs of the workers under pandemic/lockdown situations.

Spatial features of a penitentiary unit in the context of stress experienced by Prison Service staff

Prison as the place of work of the Prison Service staff is a specific workplace due to both the nature of the prison community as well as the infrastructural and architectural solutions deployed to protect prison officers. Considering the spatial features of a penitentiary unit and their role in the due performance of Prison Service tasks, it seems quite relevant to seek an answer to the question: How does the physical space of a prison contribute to the stress experienced by prison officers? The issue in question is rooted in M. Mendel’s concept of pedagogy of place, symbolic interactionism and S. Hobfoll’s conservation of resources theory. Inquiry into a research problem of this kind seems reasonable taking into account the infrastructural and spatial aspects of the surroundings that can be potential stress drivers. In April 2021, a group of 58 prison officers were surveyed based on the Stress Perception Questionnaire and the author’s questionnaire. Relationships between the variables have been established through the use of correlation, significant difference test and variance analysis. The results revealed that the essential spatial characteristics of a penitentiary unit associated with the perception of stress by Prison Service staff are those features that relate to the penitentiary unit’s functional aspects covering the specific technical and protective safeguards. These results formed a premise for designating higher-risk staff groups, with regard to which preventive programmes aimed at counteracting the negative effects of stress experience should be considered

641 The status of life satisfaction and physical stress experience among children with sleep related issues: PROMIS approach

Introduction To identify the status of health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) domains in children with sleep disturbance. Methods Patients ages 5–17 years visiting sleep laboratory from 09/2019 to 01/2020 for overnight PSG participated in the study. Age and sex matched control participants were seen in general pediatrics during 02/2020 for issues other than sleep disturbance. HR-QoL was assessed by PROMIS V1.0 questionnaires. Statistical analysis was conducted using R 3.6.0. Results 122 patients were included in the final analysis: 70 males (57.4%). Ninety nine (81.15%) patients were included from the sleep laboratory and 23 (18.85%) controls were recruited from the department of pediatrics. Among the patients visiting sleep laboratory, thirty one (25.4%) had mild OSA, 12 (9.8%) moderate OSA, 19 (15.6%) severe OSA, 37 (30.3%) were diagnosed with No-OSA. Twenty three (18.9%) controls were visiting to the hospital for their routine wellness examination requiring no PSG. Severity of OSA was not correlated with any HR-QoL domain. Patients visiting the sleep laboratory had lower life satisfaction (p=0.05) and higher physical stress experience (p=0.005). Age, BMI were negatively and N3 sleep was positively associated with family relations (p<0.001, 0.03, 0.006, respectively). N3 sleep was positively and age was negatively associated with life satisfaction (p<0.001, p=0.003, respectively). Increase in arousals was associated with increased physical stress experience (p=0.03). N3 sleep and anger were negatively associated with each other (p=0.05). Conclusion Children visiting sleep laboratory had higher physical stress experience and lower life satisfaction as compared to controls. Deep sleep was associated with problems with family relations, life satisfaction and anger. Regression analysis suggested that age was negatively associated with family relations and life satisfaction. Support (if any) None