Closeness to Parents and Experiencing Threats with COVID-19 Mediates the Link between Personality and Stress among Adolescents.

Purpose: many researchers have already established that the 2019 COVID-19 pandemic poses a threat to adolescent psychological health. Studies on the COVID-19 pandemic mainly focus on individual psychological consequences, such as anxiety, depression or stress. The presented study added a family context to psychological analyses of the COVID-19 pandemic in adolescence. We examined the mediational effects of closeness to parents and perceived pandemic-related threats to relationships between personality (emotional stability and agreeableness) and stress in adolescents.

Methods: in total, 413 students from secondary schools in southern Poland completed questionnaires measuring stress, personality, closeness to parents and experiencing threats with COVID-19.

Results: the results demonstrated that closeness with parents in conjunction with experiencing family-related threats and threats related to lifestyle changes were mediators between adolescent personality traits and the intensity of the stress experienced.

Conclusions: closeness with parents and threats experienced with COVID-19 mediate relationships between personality traits (emotional stability and agreeableness) and the intensification of stress in adolescents.