Psychological distress related to the emerging COVID-19 pandemic and coping strategies among general population in Egypt

Background Psychological distress is considered a threat to the mental health of human beings. This research was conducted at the beginning of the emerging COVID-19 pandemic, when most people had limited knowledge about coronavirus, mode of transmission, associated manifestations, with uncertainty about treatment, vaccine, future life, and coping capacity. This study examined the nature of the psychological distress related to the emergence of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and coping strategies adopted among the general population in Egypt. Methods This was a descriptive, cross-sectional study assessing a convenience sample consisting of 312 participants from the general population in Egypt. Data were gathered as online responses to a questionnaire which incorporated a sociodemographic datasheet, psychological distress scale, and ways of coping scale. Results Forty-two percent of the participants showed severe psychological distress and 26% showed mild to moderate psychological distress. There was a strong positive correlation between the distress score and the overall coping score—that is, the higher the distress, the more ways of coping were adopted (p < 0.001). This study also showed that the methods of adaptation used by most of the population were based on emotional coping strategy. The most adaptive people were those who work in the health field and the residents in the cities with a monthly income sufficient enough to meet their needs; better adaptation methods were also seen among both divorced and highly educated people. We also found a significant relationship between sociodemographic characteristics except for sex and overall coping methods (p < 0.001). Further, significant relationships between sociodemographic characteristics and psychological distress were observed (p < 0.001). Conclusion Most of the study population as a sample of the general population in Egypt reported suffering from varying degrees of psychological distress during the COVID-19 crisis. However, the more severe an individual’s level of psychological distress, the greater their adaptation ability was. This study focuses light on the importance to provide appropriate interventions against COVID-19-related stresses and equipping people with suitable strategies for coping with the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I Had to Rediscover Our Healthy Food”: An Indigenous Perspective on Coping with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) is disproportionally prevalent among the Bedouin minority in Israel, with especially poor treatment outcomes compared to other indigenous groups. This study uses the perspective of the Bedouins themselves to explore the distinct challenges they face, as well as their coping strategies. The study is based on an interpretive interactionist analysis of 49 semi-structured interviews with Bedouin men and women. The findings of the analysis include three themes. First, physical inequality: the Bedouin community’s way of coping is mediated by the transition to a semi-urban lifestyle under stressful conditions that include the experience of land dispossession and the rupture of caring relationships. Second, social inequality: they experience an inaccessibility to healthcare due to economic problems and a lack of suitable informational resources. Third, unique resources for coping with T2DM: interviewees use elements of local culture, such as religious practices or small enclaves of traditional lifestyles, to actively cope with T2DM. This study suggests that there is a need to expand the concept of active coping to include indigenous culture-based ways of coping (successfully) with chronic illness.

Conceptualisation of the pandemic situation by the recovered people

The article is devoted to the study of the concept of the pandemic and coping behaviour. Two groups of participants are the following – the recovered respondents (n=57) and those who have not had a new coronavirus infection (n=57). The concept of the pandemic in psychological interpretation is a mental model that reflects objectified and subjective-evaluative characteristics and affects the choice of copings in a specific difficult situation. Based on the expert work, the relevant objectified and subjective-evaluative characteristics of the pandemic concept were identified. The conceptualisation of the pandemic is diagnosed using a directed associative experiment (the stimulus included the word “pandemic”), the pictographic technique and the “Ways of Coping Questionnare” by Richard S. Lazarus and Susan Kleppner Folkman. It was revealed that youth understood the pandemic as a global restriction caused by a viral disease, accompanied by negative emotions and coping by individual means of protection/distancing. The recovered participants considered the pandemic as a long viral disease a person suffers in isolation accompanied by fear, horror, loneliness, fatigue. Women who had been ill conceptualised the pandemic in emotionally-coloured characteristics and more often searched the social support than men (p=0.036). Men interpreted the pandemic as a widespread treasonous disease. The resource of the individual protective equipment, positive rethinking and social support in overcoming a specific difficult situation (the COVID-19 pandemic) is shown.

THE IMPACT OF AUTISTIC-TEA SPECTRUM DISORDER DIAGNOSIS ON FAMILY EXPERIENCE: ROUTINE CHANGES

The impacts of the diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Disorder can change the routine of the family as a whole.The aim of this study is to analyze the impacts of the ASD diagnosis on the family's experience. And its specific objectives are: contextualize the diagnosis of ASD and the family; raise changes in the family's routine; know the impacts of the ASD diagnosis on the family nucleus;identify the main ways of coping with common difficulties in prognosis.The procedure was through a bibliographic search of articles published from 2015 to 2020, using the electronic database of articles in the Scientific electronic libraly (SCIELO) and Google Scholar databases, using keywords: diagnosis of autism; family; impacts.The strategies for coping with ASD are due to the set of attitudes and solutions found by the family members of the person with autism,which requires an effort to adapt and deal with adverse and stressful circumstances and impacts that are characteristics of living and care of a person diagnosed with ASD.

Psychometrics Properties of Ways of Coping Questionnaire-Korean among College Students

Background: The purpose of this study was to investigate the validity and reliability of the Ways of Coping Questionnaire-Korean (WCQ-K) among college students.Methods: A cross-sectional survey design was employed to validate psychometrics properties of the WCQ-K among 248 students from a university-affiliated health-care center in Suwon, Korea. Structured questionnaires were used for psychometric evaluation. Item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and known-groups validity were performed for validity. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient and Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) were used for reliability.Results: A seven-factor model with 36 items explained 50.8% of the variance. The Cronbach’s alpha was 0.90; the ICC for 2-weeks test-retest reliability was 0.80. Students with stable ways of coping tended to have a lower score on the perceived stress and depressive symptoms than their counterparts (all P<0.05).Conclusions: The findings of this study provide evidence for the adequate psychometric properties of the WCQ-K. The WCQ-K may be used in school or clinical settings to examine the potential role of stress-coping strategies in enhanced stress management among Korean college students.

PSYCHOLOGISM OF THE NOVEL “THE BOOK OF TOMORROW” BY CECILIA AHERN

The article reveals the phenomenon of psychologism in fiction and the ways of its actualization in modern English literature concerned with psychological aspects. The notion is analyzed on the basis of Cecilia Ahern’s novel “The Book of Tomorrow” that depicts the protagonist’s psychological crisis as a result of personal loss and the ways of coping with negative experience. Lexical-stylistic and compositional means are studied through the prism of the representation of the protagonist’s internal feelings caused by inner and outer factors. The role of symbols, fairy-tale allusions, personifications, artistic details and comparative tropes in depicting the young girl’s crisis state and her reactions to life changes is traced. The function of key words, implicit details, temporal fractures and the title in the compositional framing of the text is researched. The role of the mentioned-above linguistic means in the reflection of transformations taking place in the protagonist’s consciousness is studied. Some peculiarities of Cecilia Ahern’s individual author’s style, such as wide use of fairy-tale allusions and personifications, contrastive application of some lexical-stylistic means (artistic details) and the coherent function of the others (an implicit detail, extended metaphors), are outlined. The author’s favourite key words are listed; the stylistic role of their repetitions in different contexts is shown. The retrospective actualization of the lexeme tomorrow presented in the title is traced.