Religious coping, care burden and psychological distress among informal caregivers of COVID-19 patients: Results of a cross-sectional survey in Pakistan.

COVID-19; CROSS-sectional method; BURDEN of care; REGRESSION analysis; SURVEYS; PSYCHOLOGICAL tests; PSYCHOLOGY of caregivers; PSYCHOLOGY & religion; PSYCHOLOGICAL adaptation; SOCIAL psychology; PSYCHOLOGICAL distress

Background: There is a complex relationship between health and religiosity. People may use religion to cope with difficulties and uncertainties in their life – such as induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. Aims: The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between religious coping, care burden and psychological distress among caregivers during COVID-19 in Pakistan. Method: We conducted a cross-sectional survey in Pakistan. We used the Religious Coping Scale (RCOPE), Care Burden Scale (CB), and Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale (DASS-21) to measure psychological stress from 303 caregivers. Data were analyzed using a hierarchical linear regression model for each of the three outcome variables, which are depression, anxiety, and stress. This analysis allows to investigate whether adding variables significantly improves a model's ability to predict the criterion variable. Results: The findings reveal that emotional care burden, physical care burden, negative religious coping, and social care burden explain a significant amount of the variance of three components of psychological distress among caregivers. Conclusions: Health experts, psychologists, and policymakers can make better strategies to combat pandemics like COVID-19 by incorporating religious coping methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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