Journal Articles
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/7915
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Item Coping with stress during the COVID-19 pandemic in the oldest-old population(Springer Nature B.V., 2022-12) Gerhards SK; Pabst A; Röhr S; Luppa M; Riedel-Heller SGThe aim of the study is to investigate psychosocial factors that are associated with positive and negative coping with stress, as well as with worries about and perceived threat by COVID-19 to enable us to provide adequate support for oldest-old individuals. A paper–pencil-based survey assessed COVID-19 worries and perceived threat, depression, anxiety, somatization, social support, loneliness, resilience, positive and negative coping in a sample of n = 197 oldest-old individuals (78–100 years). Linear multivariate and binary logistic regression analyses were conducted. Individuals with high levels of resilience were more likely to feel self-efficient when coping with stress. High levels of depression, anxiety and loneliness were associated with feeling more helpless when coping with stress. However, oldest-old individuals who felt lonely also experienced situations where they felt competent in stress coping. Being male and experiencing high levels of social support was more likely associated with high levels of worries due to COVID-19. Increased age and higher levels of depression were associated with lower levels of perceived personal threat, whereas higher somatization scores were more likely associated with higher perceived personal threat. Findings suggest that mental health factors may shape the way oldest-old individuals cope with pandemic-related stress. Resilience might be an important factor to take into account when targeting an improvement in positive coping with stress. Oldest-old individuals who have higher levels of depression, anxiety and feel lonely may be supported by adapting their coping skill repertoire to reduce the feeling of helplessness when coping with stress.Item Posttraumatic Growth and Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms in People with HIV(Springer Nature, 2022-11) Chi D; de Terte I; Gardner DReceiving a diagnosis of HIV can be challenging. People with HIV (PWH) can experience high levels of distress, as well as some positive psychological changes associated with post-traumatic growth. However, the mechanisms which underlying the association of a highly stressful event (i.e., being diagnosed with HIV) and posttraumatic growth (PTG) and posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) are under-explored, and this is the focus of the study. Cross-sectional survey data were provided by 77 PWH living in New Zealand. An analysis examined the roles of deliberate rumination and coping strategies as serial mediators of the associations between event centrality and PTG and PTSSs. The relationships between event centrality and PTG and PTSSs were found to be sequentially mediated by deliberate rumination and avoidance coping, but not by deliberate rumination and active coping. Further analyses explored active coping and deliberate rumination as parallel mediators, with avoidance coping as a subsequent mediator, between event centrality and PTG and PTSSs. However, these analyses were not supported. The findings indicate that the more participants appraised the HIV diagnosis as central, the greater PTG they perceived; however, the more they deliberately ruminated on it, and the more avoidance coping they adopted, the less PTG and greater PTSSs they perceived. Future studies need to explore the relationships of event centrality and coping and their associations with PTG and PTSSs.
