Investigation of the relationship between COVID-19 related psychological distress and safety behaviors, obsessive beliefs, and obsessive-compulsive symptoms with a longitudinal design

Recent findings indicate that the COVID-19 outbreak is associated with high distress levels. Obsessive-compulsive tendencies may render individuals vulnerable to elevated distress and over-adherence to safety behaviors during illness outbreaks. In the first research conducted within the scope of this thesis study, we aimed to develop the COVID-19 Distress Scale, a fourteen-item self-report measure assessing anxiety, threat perception, and hopelessness related to COVID-19 and evaluate its psychometric properties. To that end, 626 participants were asked to answer the COVID-19 Distress Scale and other mental health measures. The results of the exploratory factor analysis indicated that the scale has a three-factor structure consisting of anxiety, threat perception and hopelessness related to COVID-19 and internal consistency, test-retest reliability, component, divergent and predictive validity. Then, 548 participants answered the COVID-19 Psychological Stress Scale, and confirmatory factor analysis supported the three-factor structure of the scale. In the second study conducted within the scope of the thesis, 429 participants were asked to answer the measures of obsessive beliefs, obsessive-compulsive symptoms, psychological distress and safety behaviors related to COVID-19 in March 2020. 279 participants participated in the follow-up assessment, which included obsessive-compulsive symptoms, COVID-19 distress and safety behaviors. Results indicated that baseline obsessive beliefs predicted the COVID-19 distress six moths later through obsessive Compulsive symptoms. In addition, the relationship between baseline obsessive beliefs and safety behavior adoption six months later was mediated by later obsessive-compulsive symptoms and COVID-19 distress. Results suggest that the COVID-19 Distress Scale is a robust and multidimensional measure assessing COVID-19 related distress and extended prior research on the association between cognitive bias, obsessive-compulsive phenomena, and psychological changes related to illness outbreaks. The implications for prevention and treatment strategies are discussed.