While this research has improved our understanding of the factors that can protect against ill-being during the pandemic, reducing ill-being is not the same as promoting wellbeing, as wellbeing does not necessarily emerge when illbeing is reduced ( Ryff et al., 2006 Westerhof and Keyes, 2010). Higher levels of community connectedness have also been linked to lower levels of psychological distress ( Sibley et al., 2020). Other researchers have highlighted potentially protective factors against loneliness, including higher levels of social support ( OR: 0.92), being married or co-habiting ( OR: 0.35), and living with more adults ( OR: 0.87) ( Groarke et al., 2020). A significant reduction in wellbeing-measured by the Warwick-Edinburgh Well-being Scale-was observed in a large sample of 12,989 participants from Wales ( Gray et al., 2020). The Office for National Statistics ( ONS, 2020) reported a large increase in anxiety and decrease in life satisfaction due to boredom, loneliness, anxiety, and stress during March and April, 2020 ( ONS, 2020), representing the first 2 months of lockdown associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent publications on the COVID-19 pandemic have raised concerns about the deterioration of mental health ( Cullen et al., 2020 Galea et al., 2020 Gunnell et al., 2020 Pfefferbaum and North, 2020 Xiong et al., 2020). Beyond threat to life, COVID-19 has caused widespread bereavement, self-isolation, loss of income, unemployment as well as delays in treatment for ongoing health conditions as resources are diverted toward managing COVID-19 patients ( Spinelli and Pellino, 2020). As of February 22nd 2021, over 109 million cases had been diagnosed globally with more than 2.3 million fatalities ( GOV.UK, 2020). Since the easing of the first nation-wide lockdown further restrictions had been imposed in the United Kingdom although these differed by locality.
Residents were only permitted to leave their household to shop for basic necessities, to exercise once a day, to tend to medical needs, or to travel for work when working from home was not possible. On March 11th 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared the COVID-19 outbreak a global pandemic and on March 23rd, the UK government declared a nation-wide lockdown requiring citizens to stay at home. Our results identify key psychological attributes that may be harnessed through various positive psychology strategies to mitigate the adverse impacts of hardship and suffering, consistent with an existential positive psychology of suffering.ĬOVID-19 is a respiratory virus leading to general symptoms such as fever and cough, with more severe cases requiring intubation ( Chan et al., 2020 Wang et al., 2020). Gratitude and tragic optimism emerged as significant contributors to the model. Protective factors were observed to account for up to 50% of variance in wellbeing in a hierarchical linear regression that controlled for a range of sociostructural factors including age, gender, and subjective social status, which impact on wellbeing but lie beyond individual control. Initial analysis involved the application of one-sample t-tests, which confirmed that wellbeing (measured by the Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being scale) in the current sample ( N = 138 M = 46.08, SD = 9.22) was significantly lower compared to previous samples ( d = −0.36 and d = −0.41). Protective factors included physical activity (i.e., a health behaviour that helps to build psychological wellbeing), tragic optimism (optimism in the face of tragedy), gratitude (a prosocial emotion), social support (the perception or experience of being loved, cared for, and valued by others), and nature connectedness (physical and psychological connection to nature). Inspired by developments in wellbeing science and guided by our own theoretical framework (the GENIAL model), we examined the role of various potentially protective factors in a sample of 138 participants from the United Kingdom. Research has highlighted adverse impacts of COVID-19 on wellbeing but has yet to offer insights as to how wellbeing may be protected. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a global threat to physical and mental health worldwide. 5Department of Psychology, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada.4Health and Wellbeing Academy, Swansea University, Swansea, United Kingdom.
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