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Emotional impact and resilience in adolescents in Spain and Ecuador during COVID-19: A cross-cultural study

Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic is impacting the emotional health of adolescents. Factors such as resilience can buffer this important impact on their well-being. Our aim was to study the association between anxious-depressive symptomatology and resilience in adolescents from Spain and Mexico, and to compare the differences between the two samples. A total of 476 adolescents (70.10 % female) aged 9-18 years (M = 15.62; SD = 1.22), equally distributed between the two countries, participated in the study. They were assessed using the Depression, Anxiety and Stress Scale and the Resilience Scale. We conducted descriptive analyses, independent samples t-tests, effect size calculation and Pearson correlations. The results showed that the profile of adaptive adjustment to the pandemic was: being a male, not having experienced a stressful life event, not having previous physical or psychological health problems and residing in Spain. While the risk profile for the pandemic was: being a female, having a stressful life event, having some type of previous physical and psychological health problem, and residing in Ecuador. Our data point to the importance of detecting the specific needs of adolescents according to their socio-economic and cultural context in order to implement interventions to protect their mental health during the pandemic.