COVID-19-Related Intolerance of Uncertainty and Mental Health Among Back-To-School Students in Wuhan: The Moderation Effect of Social Support

Overview

Journal Int J Environ Res Public Health

Publisher MDPI

Specialties Environmental Health
Public Health

Date 2021 Jan 27

PMID 33499409

Citations 26

Authors

Lijun Zhuo

Qian Wu

Hong Le

Hao Li

Ling Zheng

Guoqing Ma

Hongbing Tao

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The current wave and future trend of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has triggered public uncertainty, causing unbearable psychological pressure on people. A cross-sectional online questionnaire was conducted among back-to-school students in Wuhan from 31 August 2020, to 14 September 2020, by using convenience sampling. A total of 1017 participants voluntarily provided sociodemographic characteristics and accomplished the following scales: the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale (IUS-12), the Social Support Scale (SSQ), the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7), the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), and the Insomnia Severity Index-7 (ISI-7). Results revealed that the levels of anxiety, depression, and insomnia were moderate, moderate and subthreshold, respectively. A one-way multivariate analysis of variance indicated that those with different attitudes toward the trajectory of the COVID-19 epidemic in China showed significantly different results in anxiety and depression (). Moderation modeling implicated that social support significantly moderated the predictive relationship between intolerance of uncertainty and mental health variables including anxiety and depression, but failed on insomnia. Findings indicate that back-to-school students in Wuhan experience mental health problems and improving social support measures could buffer the effect of intolerance of uncertainty with respect to COVID-19 on mental health.

Citing Articles

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