Dispositional optimism boosts family adaptation to the COVID-19 pandemic: an intergenerational investigation of the associations between dispositional optimism, COVID-19 related worries, and depression/anxiety symptoms
Description
The impacts of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on mental health have been extensively studied. Several studies have indicated that optimism could play buffer effects during the pandemic. However, this hypothesis has yet been examined in family studies. This paper aimed to investigate the relationships of optimism, COVID-19 related worries, and depression/anxiety symptoms in both children and their parents, and further explore whether parents’ optimism could reduce children’s COVID-19 related worries, and depression/anxiety through the indirect effects of children’s optimism. Participants were 2011 Chinese parent-child dyads (father 40.8%, mean age 41.10 years, SD=5.34; boy 51.0%, mean age 15.25 years, SD = 2.48) from Jiangxi Province, China. Self-report questionnaires were used separately for both children and parents to investigate the COVID-19 related worries, depression, anxiety and optimism during the outbreak of COVID-19. Structural equation model showed that parents’ report of self-quarantine and quarantine of family members, relatives or friends were positively correlated with their COVID-19 related worries and depression/anxiety. Parents’ optimism significantly related to children’s optimism, while correlationships of COVID-19 related worries and optimism were significant but small in both parents and children. Parents’ optimism was negatively associated with children’s COVID-19 related worries via reduction of parents’ COVID-19 related worries. Furthermore, parents’ optimism was negatively related to their own depression/anxiety, and was also associated with lower child’s depression/anxiety via children’s optimism and their own depression/anxiety. Optimism can buffer the effects of trauma on mental health. Intergenerational transmission of optimism is an important mechanism for families to adapt common traumatic events.
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SPSS 16.0 and Mplus 7.4