RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Impact of Quarantine on Emotions during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Gintaras Chomentauskas1, *, Edita Dereškevičiūtė1, Gustė Kalanavičiūtė1, Rasa Ališauskienė2, Kristina Paulauskaitė1
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2021Volume: 14
First Page: 273
Last Page: 285
Publisher ID: TOPSYJ-14-273
DOI: 10.2174/1874350102114010273
Article History:
Received Date: 23/2/2021Revision Received Date: 09/6/2021
Acceptance Date: 27/6/2021
Electronic publication date: 10/11/2021
Collection year: 2021
open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Introduction:
The present study explores how the general population of Lithuania felt during the national quarantine of COVID-19 in the period from March 30th to June 8th, 2020. Representative subjects were interviewed five times using adapted single-item questions to evaluate their emotions, stress, and perceived pain levels.
Methods:
It was hypothesized that gender and age-related differences would be found in emotional responses to the quarantine.
Results and Discussion:
During the five polls taken, more women were found to report feeling stressed, anxious, sad, and in more physical pain than men. Evaluations of anger, enjoyment, and calmness provided no statistically significant gender differences. Emotions were found to differ significantly between three age groups (18-29, 30-49, 50-74).
Conclusion:
Contrary to expectations, the biggest negative impact of quarantine was found in the youngest group aged 18-29 years: it showed the highest prevalence of stress, anxiety, and sadness of all age groups. Possible explanations for different gender and age-related emotional reactions are discussed.
