Fear and Psychopathology During the COVID-19 Crisis: Neuroticism,Hypochondriasis,Reassurance-Seeking,and Coronaphobia as Fear Factors

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated a rise in psychological distress worldwide. Although fear appears to be a major contributing factor, there has been no systematic research to determine which specific facets of fear predict psychopathology during the coronavirus crisis. The present study is the first to examine which fear factors uniquely predict clinical levels of depressive symptoms and generalized anxiety. Data were collected from 256 adults in the United States recruited from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) during the coronavirus pandemic. The results from logistic regression analyses demonstrated that neuroticism, coronaphobia, and hypochondriasis were fear factors that predicted pandemic-related psychopathology in adults. These findings suggest that mental health professionals should screen individuals for this set of fear factors when choosing appropriate assessments and interventions for treating people who are suffering during the crisis.

Keywords

COVID-19 coronaphobia coronavirus anxiety depression

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Ahorsu

D. K.

Lin

Imani

Saffari

Griffiths

M. D.

Pakpour

A. H.

(2020). The fear of COVID-19 scale: Development and initial validation. International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-020-00270-8

Alberts

N. M.

Hadjistavropoulos

H. D.

Jones

S. L.

Sharpe

(2013). The short health anxiety inventory: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 27(1), 68–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2012.10.009

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.).

American Psychiatric Association. (2020). New poll: COVID-19 impacting mental well-being. https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/news-releases/new-poll-covid-19-impacting-mental-well-being-americans-feeling-anxious-especially-for-loved-ones-older-adults-are-less-anxious

American Psychological Association. (2019). Clinical practice guideline for the treatment of depression across three age cohorts: American Psychological Association guideline development panel for the treatment of depressive disorders. https://www.apa.org/depression-guideline/guideline.pdf

Asmundson

G. J. G.

Taylor

(2020). Coronaphobia: Fear and the 2019-nCoV outbreak. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 70, 102196. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2020.102196

Bailey

R. K.

Mokonogho

Kumar

(2019). Racial and ethnic differences in depression: Current perspectives. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 15, 603–609. https://doi.org/10.2147/NDT.S128584

Buhrmester

Kwang

Gosling

S. D.

(2011). Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: A new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data? Perspectives on Psychological Science: A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 6(1), 3–5. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691610393980

Buhrmester

M. D.

Talaifar

Gosling

S. D.

(2018). An evaluation of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, its rapid rise, and its effective use. Perspectives on Psychological Science: A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 13(2), 149–154. doi: 10.1177/1745691617706516

10.

Bycoffe

Groskopf

Mehta

(2020). How Americans view the coronavirus crisis and Trump’s response. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/coronavirus-polls/

11.

Chang

S. S.

Stuckler

Yip

Gunnell

(2013). Impact of 2008 global economic crisis on suicide: Time trend study in 54 countries. British Medical Journal, 347, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.f5239

12.

Express Scripts. (2020). America’s state of mind report. https://www.expressscripts.com/corporate/americas-state-of-mind-report

13.

Hedman

Andersson

Lindefors

Gustavsson

Lekander

Ruck

Andersson

Ljotsson

(2014). Personality change following internet cognitive behavior therapy for severe health anxiety. PlosONE, 9(12), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0113871

14.

John

O. P.

Srivastava

(1999). The big five trait taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical perspectives. In Pervin

L. A.

John

O. P.

(Eds.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (2nd ed., pp. 102–138). Guilford Press.

15.

Joiner

T. E.

Jr Metalsky

G. I.

Katz

Beach

S. R. H.

(1999). Depression and excessive reassurance-seeking. Psychological Inquiry, 10(3), 269–278.

16.

Jorm

A. F.

(1989). Modifiability of trait anxiety and neuroticism: A meta-analysis of the literature. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 23(1), 21–29.

17.

Kaiser Family Foundation. (2020). KFF coronavirus poll: March 2020. https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/poll-finding/kff-coronavirus-poll-march-2020/

18.

Kalat

J. W.

Shiota

M. N.

(2007). Emotion. Thompson Wadsworth.

19.

Kroenke

Spitzer

R. L.

Williams

J. B.

Löwe

(2009). An ultra-brief screening scale for anxiety and depression: The PHQ–4. Psychosomatics, 50(6), 613–621.

20.

Lahey

B. B.

(2009). Public health significance of neuroticism. The American Psychologist, 64(4), 241–256. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015309

21.

LeBlanc

Fitzgerald

(2000). Logistic regression for school psychologists. School Psychology Quarterly, 15(3), 344–358.

22.

Lee

S. A.

(2020a). Coronavirus anxiety scale: A brief mental health screener for COVID-19 related anxiety. Death Studies, 44(7), 393–401. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481187.2020.1748481

23.

Lee

S. A.

(2020b). Measuring coronaphobia: The psychological basis of the coronavirus anxiety scale. Dusunen Adam: The Journal of Psychiatry and Neurological Sciences. https://doi.org/10.14744/DAJPNS.2020.00069

24.

Lee

S. A.

(2020c). Replication analysis of the coronavirus anxiety scale. Dusunen Adam: The Journal of Psychiatry and Neurological Sciences, 33. https://doi.org/10.14744/DAJPNS.2020.00079

25.

Lee

S. A.

Jobe

M. C.

Mathis

A. A.

(2020). Mental health characteristics associated with dysfunctional coronavirus anxiety. Psychological Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1017/S003329172000121X

26.

Lee

S. A.

Jobe

M. C.

Mathis

A. A.

Gibbons

J. A.

(2020). . Incremental validity of coronaphobia: Coronavirus anxiety explains depression, generalized anxiety, and death anxiety. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 74, 102268. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2020.102268

27.

Lee

S. A.

Mathis

A. A.

Jobe

M. C.

Pappalardo

E. A.

(2020). Clinically significant fear and anxiety of COVID-19: A psychometric examination of the coronavirus anxiety scale. Psychiatry Research, 290, 113112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2020.113112

28.

Mannix

Lee

L. K.

Fleegler

E. W.

(2020). Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and firearms in the United States: Will an epidemic of suicide follow? Annals of Internal Medicine. https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.7326/M20-1678

29.

Mazza

Ricci

Biondi

Colasanti

Ferracuti

Napoli

Roma

(2020). A nationwide survey of psychological distress among Italian people during the COVID-19 pandemic: Immediate psychological responses and associated factors. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(9), 3165. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17093165

30.

National Institute of Mental Health. (2015). Depression: What you need to know (NIH Publication No. 15-3561). https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/depression-what-you-need-toknow/depression-what-you-need-to-know-pdf_151827.pdf

31.

Ohman

(2000). Fear and anxiety: Evolutionary, cognitive, and clinical perspectives. In Lewis

Haviland-Jones

J. M.

(Eds.), Handbook of emotions (2nd ed., pp. 573–593). New York: Guilford.

32.

Paolacci

Chandler

(2014). Inside the Turk: Understanding Mechanical Turk as a participant pool. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 23(3), 184–188. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721414531598

33.

Pew Research Center. (2020). People financially affected by COVID-19 outbreak are experiencing more psychological distress than others. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/03/30/people-financially-affected-by-covid-19-outbreak-are-experiencing-more-psychological-distress-than-others/

34.

Rector

N. A.

Kamkar

Cassin

S. E.

Ayearst

L. E.

Laposa

J. M.

(2011). Assessing excessive reassurance seeking in the anxiety disorders. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 25(7), 911–917. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2011.05.003

35.

Salkovskis

P. M.

Rimes

K. A.

Warwick

H. M. C.

Clark

D. M.

(2002). The health anxiety inventory: Development and validation of scales for the measurement of health anxiety and hypochondriasis. Psychological Medicine, 32(5), 843–853. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291702005822

36.

Sønderskov

K. M.

Dinesen

P. T.

Santini

Z. I.

Østergaard

S. D.

(2020). The depressive state of Denmark during the COVID-19 pandemic. Acta Neuropsychiatrica, 32(4), 226–228. https://doi.org/10.1017/neu.2020.15

37.

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration, Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality. (2015). Behavioral health trends in the United States: Results from the 2014 national survey on drug use and health (HHS Publication No. SMA 15-4927, NSDUH Series H-50). https://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/NSDUH-FRR1-2014/NSDUH-FRR1- 2014.pdf

38.

Taylor

(2019). The psychology of pandemics: Preparing for the next global outbreak of infectious disease. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

39.

Wang

Pan

Wan

Tan

C. S.

R. C.

(2020). Immediate psychological responses and associated factors during the initial stage of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic among the general population in China. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(5), 1729–25. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17051729.

40.

Wheaton

M. G.

Abramowitz

J. S.

Berman

N. C.

Fabricant

L. E.

Olatunji

B. O.

(2012). Psychological predictors of anxiety in response to the H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 36(3), 210–218. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-011-9353-3

41.

Widiger

T. A.

(2011). Personality and psychopathology. World Psychiatry, 10(2), 103–106.

42.

World Health Organization. (2017). Depression and other common mental disorders: Global health estimates. WHO Document Production Services.

43.

World Health Organization. (2020). Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak situation. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019

44.

Xie

Xue

Zhou

Zhu

Liu

Zhang

Song

(2020). Mental health status among children in home confinement during the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak in Hubei province, China. JAMA Pediatrics. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2020.1619