Two Years after the Beginning of COVID-19: Comparing Families Who Had or Did not Have Patients with COVID-19 on Health Beliefs and Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms

This study aimed to compare health beliefs and obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) in families with (FIM+) or without an infected member (FIM–) two years after the beginning of COVID-19. Additionally, this research intended to predict a decrease in OCS from baseline (T1) to 40 days later (T2) based on health beliefs.

In a longitudinal survey, 227 participants in two groups, including FIM+ (n = 98; M = 30.44; SD = 5.39) and FIM– (n = 129; M = 29.24; SD = 4.93), were selected through purposive sampling. They responded to measurements consisting of demographic characteristics, the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory-Revised (OCI-R), Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R), and COVID-19 Health Belief Questionnaire (COVID-19-HBQ) at the final assessment phase (T2). To investigate differences between the two groups and predict OCS changes from T1 to T2, data were analyzed using Chi-squared, t-tests, U-Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis, Pearson correlations, and linear regression analyses.

At T1, FIM+ demonstrated significantly greater OCS, health beliefs, posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTS), and depressive symptoms than FIM–. Furthermore, FIM+ showed a decrease in OCS from T1 to T2 after its infected member recovered from COVID-19 (P < 0.001). A decrease in OCS was correlated with a decrease in perceived susceptibility, severity, and barriers. Lack of a vulnerable family member, lower educational attainment, and being a primary caregiver were associated with a greater decrease in OCS. Changes in perceived severity and self-efficacy accounted for 17% of variation in OCS.

Even two years after the onset of the pandemic, COVID-19 not only impacts the life of patients with COVID-19 but family members who care for such patients respond to the disease by engaging in excessive health behaviors in the form of OCS.