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The COVID-19 pandemic is a global traumatic stressor affecting millions of individuals worldwide. Traumatic events often cause significant resource loss and negatively affect mental health and emotional well-being. In the wake of trauma, many people draw on religious or spiritual faith to cope with adversity and suffering. One construct that has received increased attention within the field of religious/spiritual coping is spiritual fortitude (SF), which is one's ability to consistently draw on spiritual and religious resources to cope with negative emotions in the face of stressors (Van Tongeren et al., 2018). In this paper, we present data from 255 participants who completed measures of resource loss related to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, SF, depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms. SF buffered the deleterious relationship between resource loss and mental health symptoms. Specifically, for individuals high in SF, the relationship between resource loss and mental health symptoms was weaker than for individuals low in SF. We conclude by discussing limitations of the current study, areas for future research, and implications for practice.
COVID-19 is one of the most devastating disasters of the 21st century. Natural disasters (e.g., epidemics, hurricanes, landslides, tsunamis, or floods) often harm people's health, the economy, and society (Basu & De, 2003; Boucekkine & Laffargue, 2010; Cherry et al., 2010; Ghodse & Gales, 2006; Jonkman & Vrijling, 2008; Udomratn, 2008). COVID-19 is one of the most devastating tragedies in human history, with more than 28,000,000 cases diagnosed and about 920,000 confirmed deaths around the globe as of September 13, 2020 (John Hopkins University, 2020). In addition to direct consequences to health, it will also have long-standing indirect consequences on public health and mental health. For example, countries have experienced severe economic loss, with an average reduction of national GDP of about 3%, with some countries up to 15% (Fernandes, 2020), and increased mental health concerns reported among the public (e.g., 16-28% of screened individuals endorsed depressive and anxiety symptoms; Rajkumar, 2020).
In the United States alone, there are 6.4 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 200,000 deaths as of September 23, 2020 (John Hopkins University, 2020). The lingering effects of the pandemic will likely last several years, as evidenced by the multiple forecasts of rising national and global...