ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT Background The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, with all its impacts on our way of life, is affecting our experiences and mental health. Notably, individuals with mental disorders have been reported to have a higher risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2. Personality traits could represent an important determinant of preventative health behavior and, therefore, the risk of contracting the virus. Aims We examined overlapping genetic underpinnings between major psychiatric disorders, personality traits, and susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Methods Linkage disequilibrium score regression was used to explore the genetic correlations of COVID-19 susceptibility with psychiatric disorders and personality traits based on data from the largest available respective genome-wide association studies (GWAS). In two cohorts (the PsyCourse (n=1346) and the HeiDE (n=3266) study), polygenic risk scores were used to analyze if a genetic association between, psychiatric disorders, personality traits, and COVID-19 susceptibility exists in individual-level data. Results We observed no significant genetic correlations of COVID-19 susceptibility with psychiatric disorders. For personality traits, there was a significant genetic correlation for COVID-19 susceptibility with extraversion (p=1.47×10-5; rg=0.284). Yet, this was not reflected in individual-level data from the PsyCourse and HeiDE studies. Conclusions We identified no significant correlation between genetic risk factors for severe psychiatric disorders and genetic risk for COVID-19 susceptibility. Among the personality traits, extraversion showed evidence for a positive genetic association with COVID-19 susceptibility, in one but not in another setting. Overall, these findings highlight a complex contribution of genetic and non-genetic components in the interaction between COVID-19 susceptibility and personality traits or mental disorders.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Mental Disorders , Intellectual Disability , Personality DisordersABSTRACT
Childhood maltreatment (CM)has been associated with adverse psychosocial outcomes during the pandemic, but the underlying mechanisms are unclear. In a prospective online study using baseline and 10-week follow-up data of 391 German participants, we applied multiple mediation analyses to test to what extent COVID-19 perceived stressors mediate the association between CM and later adverse psychosocial outcomescompared to established mediators of rumination and insecure attachment. We also explored the relative importance of different COVID-19 related stressors in predicting adverse psychological trajectories using elastic net regression.Results showed that CM was longitudinally associated with all adverse psychosocial outcome. COVID-19 perceived stressors, rumination, and insecure attachment mediated this relationship and full mediation was observed for the outcomes anxiety, stress and psychological well-being. COVID-19-related concerns about the future wasmost strongly and consistently associated with adverse psychosocial functioning.These findings provide preliminary evidence that COVID-19 perceived stressors, in particular concerns about the future, may be a key mechanismunderlying the development of adverse psychosocial outcomes in individuals with a CM history. Thus, COVID-19 perceived stressors may require a higher priority for prevention and treatment efforts in vulnerable groups.Our results warrant replication in more representative cross-cultural samples.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Anxiety Disorders , Wounds and InjuriesABSTRACT
Background The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted people’s lives across a broad spectrum of psychosocial domains. We report the development and psychometric evaluation of the self-report COVID-19 Pandemic Mental Health Questionnaire (CoPaQ), which assesses COVID-19 contamination anxiety, countermeasure necessity and compliance, mental health impact, stressor impact, social media usage, interpersonal conflicts, paranoid ideations, institutional & political trust, conspiracy beliefs, and social cohesion. Further, we illustrate the questionnaire’s utility in an applied example investigating if higher SARS-Cov-2 infection rates in psychiatric patients could be explained by reduced compliance with preventive countermeasures. Methods A group of 511 non-clinical individuals completed an initial pool of 111 CoPaQ items (Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/3evn9/) and additional scales measuring psychological distress, well-being, and paranoia to assess construct validity and lifetime mental health diagnosis for criterion validity. Factor structure was determined by exploratory factor analyses and validated by conducting confirmatory factor analysis in the accompanying longitudinal sample (n=318) and an independent psychiatric inpatient sample primarily admitted for major depressive-, substance abuse-, personality-, and anxiety disorders (n=113). Internal consistency was assessed by Cronbach’s Alpha and McDonald's Omega. For the applied research example, Welch t-tests and correlational analyses were conducted. Results Twelve out of 16 extracted subscales were retained in the final questionnaire version, which provided preliminary evidence for adequate psychometric properties in terms of factor structure, internal consistency, and construct and criterion validity. Our applied research example showed that patients exhibited greater support for COVID-19 countermeasures than non-clinical individuals. However, this requires replication in future studies. Conclusions We demonstrate that the CoPaQ is a comprehensive and valid measure of the psychosocial impact of the pandemic and could allow to a degree to disentangle the complex psychosocial phenomena of the pandemic as exemplified by our applied analyses.