Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact global psychological wellbeing. To investigate the sustained impact of COVID-19 on wellbeing, the current study longitudinally assessed fear of COVID-19, anxiety, depression, intolerance of uncertainty, worry, sleep quality, loneliness and alcohol use during the pandemic in the United Kingdom. Timepoint 1 (T1; N = 445) took place in February 2021 following the highest number of pandemic-related deaths in the UK. Timepoint 2 (T2, N = 198) took place in June 2021 when pandemic-related deaths had declined considerably, and many had been vaccinated. At T1, COVID-19 fear predicted elevated levels of anxiety, depression, intolerance of uncertainty, worry, sleep quality and loneliness. At T2, we observed that levels of COVID-19 fear, depression, loneliness and sleep quality decreased. However, COVID-19 fear continued to predict elevated intolerance of uncertainty, worry and impaired sleep quality. These findings demonstrate the longitudinal impact of COVID-19 fear on psychological wellbeing.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 13591053221134848 |
| Journal | Journal of Health Psychology |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 17 Nov 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information: The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Welsh Government Office for Science (Ser Cymru Tackling COVID-19) grant (WG Project Number 95). Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2022.Other keywords
- COVID-19
- United Kingdom
- longitudinal
- pandemic
- wellbeing