Background: New mothers and fathers are at risk of developing postnatal depressive problems. To understand how postnatal depressive symptoms unfold over time, analyses at the within-person level are necessary. Inspecting postnatal depressive problems at the symptom level provides a novel perspective, ultimately offering insight into which symptoms contribute to the elevation of other symptoms over time.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Psychological distress during pregnancy is a well-documented risk factor for adverse maternal outcomes. Distress related to the COVID-19 pandemic may further increase the vulnerability of pregnant women to negative mental health outcomes.
Aim: To explore the mental health experiences of pregnant women, focusing on mental health outcomes, challenges related to the pandemic, coping strategies, and factors buffering mental health factors during the restricted COVID-19 lockdown period.
Objective: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) remains a growing public health challenge across the globe and is associated with negative and persistent long-term consequences. The last decades of research have identified different mechanisms associated with the development and persistence of PTSD, including maladaptive coping strategies, cognitive and experiential avoidance, and positive and negative metacognitions. Despite these advances, little is known about how these different processes interact with specific PTSD symptoms, and how they influence each other over time at the within-person level.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Major disruptions to daily life routines made families and parents particularly vulnerable to psychological distress during the COVID-19 lockdowns. However, the specific psychopathological processes related to within-person variation and maintenance of anxiety symptomatology and parental distress components in the parental population have been largely unexplored in the literature.
Methods: In this preregistered intensive longitudinal study, a multilevel dynamic network was used to model within-person interactions between anxiety symptomatology, psychopathological processes, parental distress, and protective lifestyle components in a sample of 495 parents-each responding to daily assessments over a 40-day period.
The COVID-19 pandemic and living under social distancing restrictions have been hypothesized to impact well-being and mental health in the general population. This study investigated the general Norwegian adult population's well-being after implementing and lifting strict social distancing restrictions. The study was conducted through digital surveys; during the implementation of strict social distancing restrictions in March 2020 (T1) and 3 months later, when the preponderance of strict distancing restrictions was discontinued (T2).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe present study investigates differences in the trajectories of anxiety, depression, and sleep problems among infected versus non-infected case-controlled individuals. Patients who tested positive for COVID-19 were selected from a representative sample in Norway (N > 10,000). In total, 126 of these individuals were infected during the project period, and this group was analyzed at T5 (May 2021).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIncreased and long-term parental stress related to one's parental role can lead to parental burnout. In the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, families experienced intensified pressure due to the government-initiated contact restrictions applied to prevent the spread of the virus in the population. This study investigates the risk factors and predictors of parental burnout in a large sample of parents (N = 1488) during the COVID-19 pandemic in Norway.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDrawing on the tenets of family stress theory, the aim of this study is to examine parents' perceived stress, symptoms of anxiety, depression, and associated risk- and protective factors across demographic subgroups during in the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Norwegian parents (N = 2868; 79.5% mothers) with >1 child under 18 years of age completed an online survey two weeks after the implementation of government-initiated distancing measures.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The prevalent co-occurrence between parental stress and depression has been established prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. However, no studies to date have identified the connections through which these symptom domains interact with each other to emerge into a complex and detrimental mental health state, along with the plausible mechanistic variables that may play key roles in maintaining parental stress and depression. The aim of this research is to uncover these interactions in a period where parents experience heightened demands and stress because of the strict social distancing protocols.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe pace at which the present pandemic and future public health crises involving viral infections are eradicated heavily depends on the availability and routine implementation of vaccines. This process is further affected by a willingness to vaccinate, embedded in the phenomenon of vaccine hesitancy. The World Health Organization has listed vaccine hesitancy among the greatest threats to global health, calling for research to identify the factors associated with this phenomenon.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In these unpredictable times of the global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, parents worldwide are affected by the stress and strain caused by the physical distancing protocols that have been put in place.
Objective: In a two-wave longitudinal survey, we investigated the levels of parental stress and symptoms of anxiety and depression in a sample of parents at two time points; during the implementation of the strictest physical distancing protocols following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (T1, N = 2,868) and three months after the discontinuation of the protocols (T2, N = 1,489). Further, we investigated the relationships between parental stress and anxiety and depression relative to relationship quality and anger toward their children at the two aforementioned time points, including subgroups based on age, parental role, cultural background, relationship status, education level, number of children, employment status and pre-existing psychiatric diagnosis.