Impact of Covid 19 on Perceived Stress and Social Support during Lockdown

ABSTRACT

Background: Perceived stress is the feelings or thoughts that an individual has about how much stress they are under at a given point in time or over a given time period. Social support represents the amount of support that a person perceives and reports receive it. Social support is a phenomenon that involves interactions of people so that when a person offers social interaction, it has an important role in his health. The present study explores the relationship between perceived stress and social support during Covid 19 lockdown and its relationship with demographic variables such as age, gender, education qualifications and employment status.. Methodology: The Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS) and The Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) was completed by 120 samples - 70 males and 50 females - aged between 18 to 79 years. Descriptive, correlation, and t-test was used for data analysis. Results: The mean scores of perceived stress and social support was 17.53 and 5.39 respectively. The r value of -.406 obtained for perceived social support with perceived stress was found to be significant. This indicate a moderate levels of perceived stress and perceived social support among the respondents. The p value of 0.04 and 0.006 for perceived stress indicate a significant influence of age and gender. For educational qualifications, a p value of 0.478 and 0.7436 was obtained for perceived stress and social support. A p value for perceived was 0.001 and for perceived social support p value obtained was 0.00, for the variable of employment status. Conclusion: There was a significant negative relationship between perceived stress and perceived social support. Age and gender significantly affected the perceived stress experienced by the respondents during the lockdown period. Education made no difference to perceived stress and perceived social support. Employment status however affected both perceived stress and perceived social support