First and Second Wave COVID-19 Fear Impact: Israeli and Russian Social Work Student Fear, Mental Health and Substance Use

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused universities worldwide to limit operation, shift traditional classroom learning to internet instruction, and restrict contact through recommended social distancing (WHO 2020a). Such actions have been taken in spite of a possible mental health tsunami (Carson et al. 2020) resulting from factors of social isolation (Holmes et al. 2020), substance misuse (Gritsenko et al. 2020; Zolotov et al. 2020), and other maladaptive coping mechanisms (Bender et al. 2020; Cheng et al. 2020). The experience of living in the pandemic has heightened interest in personality factors that may serve as a bulwark against fear, stress and other COVID-19 negative impacts. Psychological resilience, understood as the ability to psychologically or emotionally cope with a crisis or quickly return to a pre-crisis state, is increasingly seen as a protective factor (Barzilay et al. 2020; Walsh 2020; Yıldırım and Solmaz 2020). Among university students, harmful pandemic effects on psychological and emotional well-being have been observed (McKay and Asmundson 2020). However, few studies have examined the evolution of such effects and resilience among university students with service responsibilities to high risk clientele (Isralowitz et al. 2020; Zolotov et al. 2020). This study aims to examine COVID-19 related fear and its association with psychoemotional conditions including substance use among Israeli and Russian social work students at two peak points or waves of infection. The first study was conducted in May and the second, including examination of student resilience, in October/November, 2020. It is hypothesized International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction https://doi.org/10.1007/s11469-020-00481-z