Yanjun Guan, Da Jiang, Chaorong Wu, Hong Deng, Shangyao Su, Emma E Buchtel, Sylvia Xiaohua Chen
It is a common understanding that the 2019 coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) significantly harmed mental health. However, findings on changes in overall life satisfaction have been mixed and inconclusive. To address this puzzling phenomenon, we draw upon the domain-specific perspective of well-being and research on catastrophe compassion and propose that the pandemic can have opposing effects on mental health and communal satisfaction, which then differently relate to people's overall life satisfaction. Longitudinal analyses of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics (HILDA) Survey of Australia ( N = 12,093) showed that while there was a greater decrease in mental health in the first COVID-19 pandemic year (2019-2020) than in the previous years (2017-2019), an increase in communal satisfaction also occurred, demonstrating a potential silver lining effect of the pandemic on people's satisfaction with family, community, and neighborhood...
July 13, 2023: American Psychologist