Does Gratitude Promote Resilience During a Pandemic?
Gratitude can help foster wellbeing during adversity. These researchers assessed whether gratitude might promote resilience among college students during the Covid pandemic. As part of an ongoing online longitudinal study about “life experiences”, college students completed questionnaires assessing gratitude, depression, anxiety and outlook both pre-Covid (from January to March, 2020) and following the beginning of the pandemic (April, 2020). Both anxiety and depression symptom severity increased to a lesser extent from pre-COVID to after the onset of COVID among those who reported greater pre-COVID gratitude. Gratitude was also correlated with less negative changes in outlook, greater positive changes in outlook, and greater endorsement of positive experiences following the onset of the pandemic. These findings suggest that gratitude lessened mental health difficulties and fostered positivity among these college students at the onset of the pandemic.
Kumar SA, Edwards ME, Grandgenett HM, et al. Journal of Happiness Studies 2022:https://doi-org.proxy01.its.virginia.edu/10.1007/s10902-022-00554-x.
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