Death anxiety and satisfaction with life among the adults in the social isolation process of Covid-19 pandemic: the mediating role of perceived stress

Abstract

Background

The present study examined the mediating role of perceived stress during the social isolation process of the Covid-19 pandemic on the association between death anxiety and satisfaction with life. The participants of the study included 410 individuals (212 females and 198 males) from Turkey. Data were collected using the Death Anxiety Scale, the Perceived Stress Scale and the Satisfaction with Life Scale.

Aims

The aim of this study was to reveal the relationships between death anxiety, perceived stress and satisfaction with life and to test the mediating role of perceived stress on the effect of death anxiety and satisfaction with life in the Covid-19 pandemic process.

Methods and results

The structural equation modelling results indicated that stress mediated the impact of death anxiety on satisfaction with life. Moreover, the bootstrapping procedure revealed significant links from death anxiety to satisfaction with life through perceived stress in the social isolation process of Covid-19.

Conclusions

The findings of the study contributed to the structuring of psychological health services to be offered within the scope of public health during the Covid-19 pandemic and the understanding of the complex nature of the relationship between psychological factors and satisfaction with life. Possible explanations and limitations were discussed.

Keywords:

• Covid-19
• death anxiety
• perceived stress
• satisfaction with life

Ethics statement

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Data were collected from individuals who volunteered to participate in the study through an online survey. This article has never been performed on Covid-19 patients or their relatives. In this article, information was obtained about the situations that individuals were in during the social isolation period when the Covid-19 epidemic was active. This study has not harmed the group to which it is applied. Therefore, ethical approval has not been necessary.

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.