The relationship of social isolation with depression and COVID-19 fear in the COVID-19 pandemic

The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between social isolation, depression and fear of COVID-19 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, it was examined whether the scores of depression and fear of COVID differ according to various demographic variables such as age, gender, marital status, education status, employment status, diagnosis of depression and anxiety, duration of social isolation at home. Participants of the study consist of individuals over the age of 18 throughout Turkey. A total of 518 volunteers participated in the research and the data were collected with the help of an online questionnaire. In this study, the Demographic Information Form prepared by the researcher was used to collect the demographic information of the participants, the Beck Depression Inventory was used to measure the depression levels and the COVID-19 fear scale was used to measure the fears of COVID-19. The data obtained from the participants were processed using the SPSS program. Simple linear Regression analysis, One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Independent sample T test tools were used in the analysis of the data. Scheffe and Tamhane's T2 post hoc tests were used to determine which groups differed after the ANOVA analysis. The analysis of the data obtained in the study revealed that the duration of staying in isolation during the pandemic did not predict depression scores; however, the duration of isolation at home during the pandemic predicted the fear of COVID-19 scores. There was a significant difference in age, marital status, employment status, previous diagnosis of depression and anxiety disorder, and depression scores in this study. On the other hand, in line with the data obtained from the research, a significant difference was found between the COVID-19 fear scores according to the variables of gender, educational status and length of stay in isolation at home. There was no significant difference according to the variables of gender, education level, and length of stay in isolation at home, depression, and age, previous diagnosis of depression and anxiety disorder and fear of COVID-19. The findings of this study are expected to contribute to other research and studies conducted both during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.