ArticleJournal of affective disorders2022
The role of alexithymia and perceived stress in mental health responses to COVID-19: A conditional process model.
Article in Journal of affective disorders, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 15 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- A systematic review of parental burnout and related factors among parents.BMC public health · 2024Pooled it
- Alexithymia as a mediator between adverse childhood events and the development of psychopathology: a meta-analysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- Anxiety statistically mediates the association between stress and difficulty identifying feelings while depression shows no effect: a cross-sectional study in college students.BMC psychology · 2026Article
- Machine learning-based analysis and prediction of factors influencing mental health among children and adolescents in Jiangsu Province.Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health · 2025Article
- Mediating Role of Mindfulness and Self-Regulation in the Relationship between Perceived Stress and Subjective Well-Being among University Students.Iranian journal of psychiatry · 2025Article
- Effect of digital mindfulness on perceived stress and anxious emotion among college students.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2025Article
- Alcohol Use Disorders and Suicidal Behaviour: A Narrative Review.Actas espanolas de psiquiatria · 2025Review
- Prevalence of Alexithymia and Associated Factors Among Dental Students in Saudi Arabia: A Cross-Sectional Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Trajectories of COVID-19 pandemic-related depressive symptoms and potential predictors: the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study.Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology · 2024Article
- Anorexia nervosa during COVID-19: loss of personal control and alexithymia as important contributors to symptomatology in adolescent girls.Journal of eating disorders · 2023Article
- Article
- Depression, anxiety, and burnout among psychiatrists during the COVID-19 pandemic: a cross-sectional study in Beijing, China.BMC psychiatry · 2023Article
- Relationships between alexithymia and food addiction: The Finnish version of Yale Food Addiction Scale and preliminary test of its psychometric properties.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- The mediating role of perceived social support: alexithymia and parental burnout in parents of children with autism spectrum disorder.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- More Positive Emotion, Less Stress Perception?Psychology research and behavior management · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundLittle is known about the psychological mechanisms underlying the mental health problems related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Hypothetically, perceived stress and alexithymia may be factors involved in the mental distress response to the pandemic; however, this remains largely unstudied. This study aims to explore the moderating role of alexithymia and the moderated mediation effects of perceived stress on the mental health change due to the pandemic.
methodsThe conditional process model was used to examine the moderated mediation. The sample consists of 659 parents from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study who completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) at 6 months after delivery, the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) and the Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90) at 2 or 4 years postpartum between 2014 and 2019; and a questionnaire for pandemic events, a brief 4-item version of the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-4) and the follow-up EPDS/SCL-90 in 2020 after 3 months from the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in Finland.
resultsAlexithymia moderated the perceived stress-mediated relations between the pandemic events and the changes of depressive and anxiety symptoms through enhancing the detrimental effect of perceived stress on mental health. LIMITATIONS: This study was mainly limited by the causality and generalizability of the findings.
conclusionsOur findings indicate the moderated mediation effects of alexithymia and perceived stress on the psychological symptoms, which has implications for understanding how and when stressful situations translate to mental health problems, identifying vulnerable individuals, and tailoring preventive and psychotherapeutic interventions.
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