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      COVID-19 Conspiracy Beliefs: Relations with Anxiety, Quality of Life, and Schemas

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          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Background

          The COVID-19 pandemic has produced a worldwide mental health crisis. Conspiracy beliefs regarding the origin of COVID-19 are prevalent, however, mental health consequences and factors associated with the likelihood of endorsing COVID-19 conspiracy theories have not yet been examined. The current study examined predictors and mental health consequences of conspiracy beliefs.

          Methods

          Participants in Canada and the United States were surveyed via Amazon Mechanical Turk in April 2020 (N= 797), approximately one month after the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic, and again in May 2020 (N= 395).

          Results

          Approximately half of the sample (49.7%) believed at least one conspiracy theory. Greater Covid-19 conspiracy beliefs were associated with more anxiety at follow up but not quality of life. Religiosity/spirituality, not knowing someone at high-risk for COVID-19, and non-white ethnicity were associated with greater conspiracy beliefs. Lower positive other-schemas were associated with greater conspiracy beliefs, only at low and moderate levels of positive self-schemas.

          Conclusions

          There is substantial conspiracy belief endorsement during the COVID-19 pandemic and conspiracy beliefs are associated with anxiety, but not quality of life. Positive self-schemas protect against believing conspiracy theories and interventions to increase positive self-schemas may be effective to reduce the negative effects of conspiracy beliefs.

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          Most cited references30

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          A brief measure for assessing generalized anxiety disorder: the GAD-7.

          Robert L Spitzer, Kurt Kroenke, Janet B W Williams … (2006)
          Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is one of the most common mental disorders; however, there is no brief clinical measure for assessing GAD. The objective of this study was to develop a brief self-report scale to identify probable cases of GAD and evaluate its reliability and validity. A criterion-standard study was performed in 15 primary care clinics in the United States from November 2004 through June 2005. Of a total of 2740 adult patients completing a study questionnaire, 965 patients had a telephone interview with a mental health professional within 1 week. For criterion and construct validity, GAD self-report scale diagnoses were compared with independent diagnoses made by mental health professionals; functional status measures; disability days; and health care use. A 7-item anxiety scale (GAD-7) had good reliability, as well as criterion, construct, factorial, and procedural validity. A cut point was identified that optimized sensitivity (89%) and specificity (82%). Increasing scores on the scale were strongly associated with multiple domains of functional impairment (all 6 Medical Outcomes Study Short-Form General Health Survey scales and disability days). Although GAD and depression symptoms frequently co-occurred, factor analysis confirmed them as distinct dimensions. Moreover, GAD and depression symptoms had differing but independent effects on functional impairment and disability. There was good agreement between self-report and interviewer-administered versions of the scale. The GAD-7 is a valid and efficient tool for screening for GAD and assessing its severity in clinical practice and research.
          Article 0 comments Cited 7217 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
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            Multidisciplinary research priorities for the COVID-19 pandemic: a call for action for mental health science

            Emily A. Holmes, Rory C O'Connor, V. Perry … (2020)
            Summary The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is having a profound effect on all aspects of society, including mental health and physical health. We explore the psychological, social, and neuroscientific effects of COVID-19 and set out the immediate priorities and longer-term strategies for mental health science research. These priorities were informed by surveys of the public and an expert panel convened by the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the mental health research charity, MQ: Transforming Mental Health, in the first weeks of the pandemic in the UK in March, 2020. We urge UK research funding agencies to work with researchers, people with lived experience, and others to establish a high level coordination group to ensure that these research priorities are addressed, and to allow new ones to be identified over time. The need to maintain high-quality research standards is imperative. International collaboration and a global perspective will be beneficial. An immediate priority is collecting high-quality data on the mental health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic across the whole population and vulnerable groups, and on brain function, cognition, and mental health of patients with COVID-19. There is an urgent need for research to address how mental health consequences for vulnerable groups can be mitigated under pandemic conditions, and on the impact of repeated media consumption and health messaging around COVID-19. Discovery, evaluation, and refinement of mechanistically driven interventions to address the psychological, social, and neuroscientific aspects of the pandemic are required. Rising to this challenge will require integration across disciplines and sectors, and should be done together with people with lived experience. New funding will be required to meet these priorities, and it can be efficiently leveraged by the UK's world-leading infrastructure. This Position Paper provides a strategy that may be both adapted for, and integrated with, research efforts in other countries.
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              Development of the World Health Organization WHOQOL-BREF Quality of Life Assessment

              (1998)
              Article 0 comments Cited 673 times – based on 0 reviews     Review now
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Journal ID (nlm-ta): Pers Individ Dif
                Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Pers Individ Dif
                Title: Personality and Individual Differences
                Publisher: Elsevier Ltd.
                ISSN (Print): 0191-8869
                ISSN (Electronic): 0191-8869
                Publication date PMC-release: 28 January 2021
                Publication date (Electronic): 28 January 2021
                Electronic Location Identifier: 110704
                Affiliations
                [a ]Graduate Department of Psychological Clinical Science, University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada
                [b ]Department of Psychology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada
                Author notes
                [* ]Corresponding author at: University of Toronto Scarborough, 1265 Military Trail, Scarborough, ON, Canada, M1C 1A4.
                Article
                Publisher Item ID: S0191-8869(21)00079-9 Publisher ID: 110704
                DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2021.110704
                PMC ID: 7843107
                PubMed ID: 33531727
                SO-VID: 9bbd71ff-f6cd-4028-9f5d-73a196343ed5
                Copyright © © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
                License:

                Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

                History
                Date received : 29 September 2020
                Date revision received : 7 December 2020
                Date accepted : 22 January 2021
                Categories
                Subject: Article

                ScienceOpen disciplines: Clinical Psychology & Psychiatry
                Keywords: covid-19,conspiracy beliefs,conspiracy theories,anxiety,quality of life,mental health
                Data availability:
                ScienceOpen disciplines: Clinical Psychology & Psychiatry
                Keywords: covid-19, conspiracy beliefs, conspiracy theories, anxiety, quality of life, mental health

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