Investigation of the moderating role of psychosocial risk and protective factors on post-traumatic stress, depressive and anxiety symptoms of adults who were placed under mandatory quarantine or isolation in Turkey during the COVID-19 outbreak

Main purpose of this thesis is to observe the changes in post-traumatic stress, depressive and anxiety symptoms that individuals show after the quarantine/isolation process and to examine the protective and risk factors' role on this change. For this purpose, a preliminary study was conducted with 420 participants (%34.3 male, %65.5 female) to examine the psychometric properties of the 2-Way Social Support Scale's Turkish version. According to exploratory factor analysis that were performed on the data, the -Way Social Support Scale's Turkish version consists of two subscales: Receiving Social Support and Giving Social Support. The cronbach alpha coefficent values are .95 for the entire scale, .91 for the Receiving Social Support Subscale and .94 for the Giving Social Support Subscale. And the test-retest reliability coefficent is .94 (p<.001). Then, data were collected from 201 participants (57.7% female, 41.3% male) for the main study. The relationship between demographic variables, pandemic-related variables and outcome variables were calculated by Pearson Product- Moment Correlation Coefficent method. In order to test the main hypotheses of the current research, analyses were carried out using the Moderator Analysis Model 1 developed by Hayes with the PROCESS plugin. According to the results of these analyzes, there was no significant relationship between the time elapsed after quarantine/isolation and post- traumatic stress symptoms, anxiety symptoms and depressive symptoms. Among the moderator variables that were included in this study, it was found that only in individuals with a high level of intolerance to uncertainty, the symptoms of post-traumatic stress decreased significantly as the time elapsed after quarantine or isolation experience (β=-.03, t(173) = -2.59, p=.010, [LLCI=-.058, ULCI=-.008]). And lastly, the contribution of the research to the field, clinical contributions, limitations and suggestions for future research were presented. Key Words COVID-19 outbreak, quarantine, isolation, giving social support, risk factors, protective factors