COVID-19 Stressful Life Events and Mental Health: Personality and Coping Styles As Moderators

Objective: To examine the role of COVID-19-specific stressful life events (SLE) in predicting depression, anxiety, and life satisfaction, and if personality traits (extraversion and neuroticism), and coping styles (problem-focused coping and avoidance coping) moderated these relations.

Participants: Data were collected from 371 college students ( = 20.59; = 2.58) from one large university of the Mid-Atlantic region in the U.S.

Methods: Participants completed an online survey measuring COVID-19 related stressful life events (adapted from a tool developed to measure stressful life events during the SARS pandemic; Costa et al., 2001; Main et al., 2011), personality (the Mini-Markers; Saucier, 1994), coping styles (by using a measure developed by Aldrige-Gerry et al., 2011), depression (PHQ-9; Kroenke et al., 2011), anxiety (GAD-7; Spitzer et al., 2006), and life satisfaction (Student's Life Satisfaction Scale, Huebner, 1996) between March 27 and April 27, 2020.

Results: Path analysis results showed that extraversion and avoidance coping style moderated the effects of SLE on depression and anxiety symptoms; neuroticism and avoidance coping style moderated the relation between SLE and life satisfaction. The moderation results also differed by gender.

Conclusions: These findings indicated that the COVID-19 pandemic had deleterious effects on college students' mental health, where extraversion emerged as a protective factor, while neuroticism and avoidance coping style were risk factors. These findings underscore the importance of paying special attention to college students' mental health needs and promoting appropriate coping strategies in the light of the current pandemic.