Long-term impact of resilience and extraversion on psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic: a longitudinal investigation among individuals with and without mental health disorders

Resilience may be viewed as a measure of stress coping ability and, as such, could be an important target of treatment in anxiety, depression, and stress reactions. We describe a new rating scale to assess resilience. The Connor-Davidson Resilience scale (CD-RISC) comprises of 25 items, each rated on a 5-point scale (0-4), with higher scores reflecting greater resilience. The scale was administered to subjects in the following groups: community sample, primary care outpatients, general psychiatric outpatients, clinical trial of generalized anxiety disorder, and two clinical trials of PTSD. The reliability, validity, and factor analytic structure of the scale were evaluated, and reference scores for study samples were calculated. Sensitivity to treatment effects was examined in subjects from the PTSD clinical trials. The scale demonstrated good psychometric properties and factor analysis yielded five factors. A repeated measures ANOVA showed that an increase in CD-RISC score was associated with greater improvement during treatment. Improvement in CD-RISC score was noted in proportion to overall clinical global improvement, with greatest increase noted in subjects with the highest global improvement and deterioration in CD-RISC score in those with minimal or no global improvement. The CD-RISC has sound psychometric properties and distinguishes between those with greater and lesser resilience. The scale demonstrates that resilience is modifiable and can improve with treatment, with greater improvement corresponding to higher levels of global improvement. Copyright 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Highlights • The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has resulted in unprecedented hazards to mental health globally. • Relatively high rates of anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, psychological distress, and stress were reported in the general population during the COVID-19 pandemic in eight countries. • Common risk factors associated with mental distress during the COVID-19 pandemic include female gender, younger age group (≤40 years), presence of chronic/psychiatric illnesses, unemployment, student status, and frequent exposure to social media/news concerning COVID-19. • Mitigation of COVID-19 induced psychological distress requires government intervention and individual efforts.

Highlights • COVID-19 patients displayed high levels of PTSS and increased levels of depression. • Patients with preexisting psychiatric disorders reported worsening of psychiatric symptoms. • Higher levels of psychiatric symptoms were found among health care workers. • A decrease in psychological well-being was observed in the general public. • However, well conducted large-scale studies are highly needed.