A Longitudinal Study of Covid Stressors and Wellbeing Outcomes: the Role of Global Meaning Violation, Meaning Making, and Meaning Made

This longitudinal study explores the till now untested role of global meaning violation in the longitudinal wellbeing, depression, and anxiety outcomes during the pandemic. Further, the study explores the potential for meaning making processes to help in longitudinal positive adaptation to covid stressors during the pandemic via meanings made as implored by Park (2021). Using the meaning making model (Park, 2010) it is proposed that covid stressors will lead to global meaning violation. Global meaning violation will further predict wellbeing, depression and anxiety longitudinally and also trigger the meaning making processes i.e. meaning making coping, an aspect of situational meaning making, and core beliefs re-examination, an aspect of global meaning making. Additionally, it is proposed that the meaning making processes will lead to positive adaptations via meanings made i.e. meaning making coping and core beliefs re-examination will be positively related to wellbeing and negatively related to depression and anxiety via posttraumatic growth, a situational meaning made, and footing in the world, a global meaning made, respectively. This study employs a 3 wave longitudinal design and uses structural equational modelling (SEM) to test the proposed hypotheses. 344 local community participants (63.95% females) completed all three surveys containing 3 attention checks to ensure high quality of data. Results indicated that acceptable goodness of fit indices supported the overall theoretical model. Findings from the longitudinal SEM indicated that covid stressors lead to global meaning violation which leads to meaning making coping and core belief re-examination at Time 1 (T1). Additionally, GMV at T1 predicted negative wellbeing at Time 2 (T2) but did not predict T2 depression and anxiety. Further, T1 meaning making coping longitudinally predicted T2 posttraumatic growth but T1 core belief re-examination did not predict T2 footing in the world. Moreover, T2 posttraumatic growth fully mediated the effect of T1 meaning making coping on T2 but not on Time 3 (T3) wellbeing, depression and anxiety. This mediatory effect was not seen for T2 footing in the world between T1 core beliefs re-examination and T2 or T3 wellbeing, depression, and anxiety outcomes. This is one of the first studies during the pandemic to provide support to core assumptions of meaning making model and enrich the literature that traumatic events like Covid19 disrupts individuals’ global meaning and this disruption is crucial for longitudinal wellbeing outcomes. Further, global meaning violation also triggers the meaning making processes of meaning making coping and core beliefs re-examination for positive adaptation to covid stressors. Moreover, this study adds to the literature that positive wellbeing outcomes of meaning making processes is mediated via meanings made by demonstrating that during covid outbreaks rather than core beliefs re-examination, meaning making coping employing both cognitive and emotional processing of stressors to change the situational meaning of the stressors, helps in positive adaptation to covid stressors via posttraumatic growth. Findings suggest potential practical implications for intervention based on cognitive and emotional processing therapy to improve wellbeing in the community during the pandemic.