Subjective well-being and anxiety level during the COVID-2019 crisis: study in Ukrainian adolescence

Abstract

The global pandemia and introduced quarantine provides completely new social conditions that affect the mental health of people. The influence of trait and state anxiety on people with different levels of subjective well-being in quarantine remains unexplored. Method: We used the PERMA-Profiler (J. Butler, M. Kern) technique to diagnose the overall level of subjective well-being and its components. The STAI method (С. Spielberger) was also used to study the level of respondent’s trait and state anxiety. Results: It was found that the overall level of life satisfaction is significantly negatively correlated with the level of trait anxiety (r = - .25). The level of state anxiety was unexpectedly lower at the beginning of quarantine (43.95 ± 3.90), than one month later (48.50 ± 5.08). Qualitative analysis has led to the conclusion that in adolescence this is due to a lack of awareness of the dangers of a pandemic and the general attitude to quarantine as a holiday and vacation. There was an inverse relationship between anxiety and positive emotions before the quarantine, but under quarantine, positive emotions lost their potential to contain anxiety, and correlations were insignificant, so even positive events under quarantine could not reduce COVID-19 anxiety. However, the general level of subjective well-being of Ukrainian youth does not correlate with the level of anxiety and has not changed significantly during the first months of the quarantine. Conclusions: The concept of subjective well-being of Ukrainian youth is based primarily on subjective indicators of positive emotions and meanings and much less depends on more objective criteria, such as health, engagement and accomplishment. It was found that during the first month of the quarantine, the level of state anxiety did not affect the experience of subjective well-being by Ukrainian adolescence.