Falcó R, Vidal-Arenas V, Ortet-Walker J, Marzo JC, Piqueras JA, PSICO-RECURSOS COVID-19 Study Group. Fear of COVID-19 and emotional dysfunction problems: Intrusive, avoidance and hyperarousal stress as key mediators. World J Psychiatry 2022; 12(8): 1088-1101 [PMID: 36158304 DOI: 10.5498/wjp.v12.i8.1088]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Verónica Vidal-Arenas, MS, Academic Fellow, Department of Basic and Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology, Universitat Jaume I, Vicent Sos Baynat s/n, Castelló de la Plana 12071, Castellón, Spain. vvidal@uji.es
Research Domain of This Article
Psychology
Article-Type of This Article
Observational Study
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
World J Psychiatry. Aug 19, 2022; 12(8): 1088-1101 Published online Aug 19, 2022. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v12.i8.1088
Fear of COVID-19 and emotional dysfunction problems: Intrusive, avoidance and hyperarousal stress as key mediators
Raquel Falcó, Verónica Vidal-Arenas, Jordi Ortet-Walker, Juan C Marzo, José A Piqueras, PSICO-RECURSOS COVID-19 Study Group
Raquel Falcó, Juan C Marzo, José A Piqueras, PSICO-RECURSOS COVID-19 Study Group, Department of Health Psychology and Center for Applied Psychology, Universidad Miguel Hernández, Elche 03202, Alicante, Spain
Verónica Vidal-Arenas, Jordi Ortet-Walker, Department of Basic and Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology, Universitat Jaume I, Castelló de la Plana 12071, Castellón, Spain
Author contributions: Falcó R and Vidal-Arenas V wrote the original draft and performed the formal analyses and interpretation; Vidal-Arenas V conceptualized the study; Ortet-Walker J helped on the theoretical framework and English editing; Marzo JC and Piqueras JA led the project and collaborated on reviewing and editing the manuscript; PSICO-RECURSOS COVID-19 Study Group designed the project and collected the data; All authors approved the final version of the article.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by Oficina de Investigación Responsable of Órgano Evaluador de Proyectos of Universidad Miguel Hernández, No. DPS.JPR.02.17.
Informed consent statement: All study participants and their legal guardian provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: The dataset and outputs are available upon request.
STROBE statement: The authors have read the STROBE Statement—checklist of items, and the manuscript was prepared and revised according to the STROBE Statement—checklist of items.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Verónica Vidal-Arenas, MS, Academic Fellow, Department of Basic and Clinical Psychology and Psychobiology, Universitat Jaume I, Vicent Sos Baynat s/n, Castelló de la Plana 12071, Castellón, Spain. vvidal@uji.es
Received: March 20, 2022 Peer-review started: March 20, 2022 First decision: May 30, 2022 Revised: June 13, 2022 Accepted: July 16, 2022 Article in press: July 16, 2022 Published online: August 19, 2022 Processing time: 150 Days and 21.9 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: This study provides the prevalence of emotional dysfunction which reached 30% during the confinement stage in Spain. Our results point to higher levels of fear of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and acute stress in participants with purely clinical symptoms compared with the normative group. We found clinically relevant associations between emotional dysfunction, fear of COVID-19 and acute stress. The mediated role of a psychophysiological activation response to explain indirect effects from fear of COVID-19 on various clinical syndromes is emphasized. These results support the need to include a therapeutic component of acute stress management in prevention and psychological intervention strategies in the face of exceptional events of a traumatic nature.
