Factors that predict anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic emergency state

The WHO warned that the COVID‐19 outbreak is expected to trigger feelings of fear, worry, and stress, as responses to an extreme threat for the community and the individual. Moreover, social factors, employment, economical issues, as well as social difficulties, and psychological factors are expected to impose further stress, especially with the expectation of an upcoming economic crisis and possible unemployment. The aim of the study was to investigate the association of various socio-psychological factors with clinically significant anxiety during the COVID-19 emergency state. The nationwide representative online study in the general population of Latvia was conducted in July 2020 during three week period. Clinically significant anxiety was assessed by the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Y1; for psychological factors Psychological Resilience Scale, Emotion Regulation Skills Questionnaire (ERSQ-27), Social Problem-Solving Inventory – Revised version (SPSI-R), one-item Loneliness scale, composite measure of the Fear of COVID-19, and Domestic Violence scale were used. Background information data analysed were age, gender, education level, marital, parental and occupational status, financial strain, general health status and anxiety in the past. Based on valid cases (N = 2533, men 40.4%, aged 18 – 75 years) and gender weight data multivariate forward-stepwise regression analyses were performed to develop a model that included significant contributing variables. Certain factors were associated with anxiety score: fear of the COVID-19 (ΔR2 = 24.0%), loneliness (ΔR2 = 14.6%), self-rated psychological resilience (ΔR2 = 6.4%), gender (being woman, ΔR2 = 2.2%), subjective evaluation of the general health status (ΔR2 = 2.3%), financial strain (ΔR2 = 1.4%), age (being young, ΔR2 = 0.8), anxiety in the past (ΔR2 = 0.3), negative problem orientation (ΔR2 = 0.2%), domestic violence (ΔR2 = 0.2%). The study’s findings can help to develop future strategies to management of psychological support for different groups in general population of Latvia.