Search results

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in immense pressure on healthcare workers (HCWs) and healthcare systems worldwide. The current multi-centre evaluation sought to explore the association between coping behaviours and levels of psychological distress among HCWs working during the initial onset of COVID-19.

Between April and July 2020 HCWs at three urban hospitals in England were invited to complete an online survey measuring personal and professional characteristics, psychological distress and coping. A principal component analysis (PCA) identified components of coping and structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test the relationship between components of coping and psychological distress.

A total of 2,254 HCWs participated (77% female, 67% white, 66% in clinical roles). Three components for coping were retained in the PCA analysis: external strategies, internal strategies and self-criticalness/substance use. SEM indicated that internally based coping was associated with lower levels of psychological distress, whereas externally based coping and self-criticalness were associated with greater psychological distress. The final model accounted for 35% of the variance in psychological distress.

This multi-centre evaluation provides unique insight into the level of psychological distress among HCWs during the initial onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020) and associated coping strategies. Addressing self-criticalness and supporting cognitive-based internal coping strategies among HCWs may protect against prolonged exposure to psychological distress. Findings highlight the importance of developing a culture of professional resilience among this vital workforce as a whole rather than placing pressure on an individual's personal resilience.

Healthcare workers are considered to be the most vulnerable to face mental health. Therefore, this paper aims to examine how negative leadership (despotic leadership) affects employees' psychological distress. Specifically, the authors investigated bullying behavior as mediating mechanism and hostile attribution bias as boundary condition that trigger psychological distress.

The authors collected data from 252 nurses and their immediate supervisors (as a coping strategy for common method bias) through “Google Forms” from various public and private hospitals.

The authors applied structural equation modeling and noted that despotic leadership positively affects employees' psychological distress through bullying behavior. In addition, hostile attribution bias is identified as an important factor in amplifying the effect of bullying behavior on psychological distress.

The authors collected data from high-power distance culture where negative leadership is more prevalent as compared to low-power distance culture. Their findings suggest management to discourage self-centered leaders (despotic) and employees with negative personality traits (hostile attribution bias) as these affect their mental health.

Drawing upon conservation of resources theory, this study is the first of its kind that has investigated how and when despotic leadership affects employees' psychological distress. In addition, the authors also highlighted the importance of negative personality traits (hostile attribution bias) that can amplify the association between bullying behavior and psychological distress.

This study aims to investigate the indirect relationship between exploitative leadership (EL) and psychological distress through emotional complexity. This study also predicted that belief in organizational conspiracy theories moderates the association between EL and emotional complexity. Furthermore, forgiveness climate acts as a boundary condition between emotional complexity and psychological distress.

The respondents of this time-lagged study (N = 325) were working in five-star and four-star hotels in three cities located in Pakistan, namely, Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Lahore. Data were collected through the questionnaire.

Results revealed that exploitative leaders cause emotional complexity among hotel employees, enhancing their psychological distress. The study further showed that hotel employees who believe in organizational conspiracy theories are more likely to experience emotional complexity under an exploitative leader. Additionally, the perceived forgiveness climate moderates the relationship between emotional complexity and psychological distress.

Hotel managers should avoid hiring those candidates for leadership positions who have a tendency to engage in exploitative behavior. Managers should maintain regular communication with hotel workers to minimize beliefs in organizational conspiracy theories. Managers should also develop a forgiveness climate to minimize psychological distress among hotel employees.

It is one of the few studies investigating the negative consequences of EL, particularly in the hospitality industry. This study has also identified the underlying causes of psychological distress among hotel workers.

Drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study aims to explore the influencing mechanism of exploitative leadership on knowledge hiding. Specifically, this study focuses on the mediating role of psychological distress and the moderating role of hostile attribution bias in affecting the mediation.

Data were collected from 324 employees of a high-technology company in China by a three-wave questionnaire survey. Hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrapping approach were employed to test hypotheses.

This study found that exploitative leadership was positively related to knowledge hiding and that psychological distress mediated this relationship. Moreover, the results revealed that the positive relationship between exploitative leadership and psychological distress and the indirect effect of exploitative leadership on knowledge hiding via psychological distress were stronger when hostile attribution was high rather than low.

The findings of this study offer guidance for managers to better undermine the negative effects of exploitative leadership.

First, this study extends the literature on exploitative leadership by verifying the positive effect of exploitative leadership on knowledge hiding. Second, this study enriches one’s understanding of the “black box” underlying the link between exploitative leadership and its consequences by demonstrating the mediating role of psychological distress. Third, by verifying the moderating role of hostile attribution bias, this study provides insights into the boundary conditions of the impact of exploitative leadership.

The purpose of this paper is to examine individual differences in people's resilience to changes in psychological distress following the 22 February 2011 Christchurch earthquake.

Data were based on a subsample of the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (NZAVS) – an annual nation-wide longitudinal study of New Zealand adults that began in 2009. In both waves of the NZAVS examined here, participants completed measures of the Big-Five, psychological distress, and demographic covariates. As such, the analyses, which focus on participants who were living in the Canterbury region before the 2011 earthquake (n=325), use measures of personality collected in late October of 2010 (Time 1) to predict changes in psychological distress after the devastation that unfolded on 22 February 2011.

Time 1 levels of Emotional Stability were inversely associated with increases in psychological distress following the 2011 earthquake. Psychological distress assessed at Time 1, however, was uncorrelated with changes in Emotional Stability.

These results show that Emotional Stability protects people against decrements to mental health following a disaster. Thus, efforts to rebuild disaster-stricken communities should ensure that those who are particularly likely to experience increases in psychological distress (i.e. those who, before a disaster, are low on Emotional Stability) receive the help they need.

This study assesses a subsample of respondents from a longitudinally based national probability study to show that Emotional Stability exerts a cross-lagged effect on changes in psychological distress following a natural disaster. The access to such measures affords us the rare opportunity to explain how people cope in the wake of a catastrophic disaster.

The purpose of this paper is to compare levels of psychological distress in 2001 and 2010 in eight countries of the former Soviet Union and to explore how these changes vary for different population groups.

Data were collected using two related studies from 2001 (n=14,242) and 2010 (n=15,081). Both studies consisted of nationally representative cross‐sectional household surveys in Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine using a standardized questionnaire. Psychological distress was measured using a 12 item instrument, with scores of 10‐12 indicating high psychological distress. Changes in prevalence of high psychological distress were measured between 2001 and 2010 by country, gender, age group, educational level, disability status, personal support and household economic status using descriptive and prevalence rate ratio analysis.

Levels of high psychological distress decreased from 8.7 per cent in 2001 to 4.9 per cent in 2010 for the whole study region (4.5 per cent to 2.8 per cent for men; 12.0 per cent to 6.5 per cent for women). All study countries recorded decreases in high psychological distress. The adjusted relative rate ratios indicate the observed decreases have not been experienced by men, older age groups, less educated respondents, those with a disabling health condition, low levels of support and bad household economic status.

The study shows decreases in levels of high psychological distress in the study countries, but that decreases were less for socially and economically marginalised populations. This highlights the cycle of poverty, social exclusion and poor mental health in the region. Despite decreases of psychological distress among women, they continue to bear a significantly higher burden than men.

This paper aims to answer the question of how, why and when abusive supervision affects employee creativity. Drawing on the conservation of resources theory, this paper examines the direct and indirect (via psychological distress) effects of abusive supervision on employee creativity. It further investigates the boundary conditions imposed by employees’ perceived distributive and procedural justice in the relationships between abusive supervision, psychological distress and employee creativity.

The study uses multi-sourced and time-lagged data collected in three waves from a survey of employees-supervisor dyads working in the Chinese manufacturing sector. In the first wave, the authors received data from 347 employees on perceived abusive supervision and perceived distributive and procedural justice. In the second wave, 320 employees shared their perceptions of psychological distress at work. In the third wave, the authors received ratings for employee creativity from the direct supervisors of 300 employees. The data were analyzed using bootstrapped moderated mediation procedures.

The findings revealed a significant negative influence of abusive supervision on employee creativity both directly and indirectly in the presence of perceived psychological distress. However, distributive and procedural justice was found to mitigate the negative impact of abusive supervision on employee creativity.

Abusive supervision has adverse consequences for employees’ creativity because it affects their psychological health. HR and top management should prioritize addressing abusive supervision first and foremost to boost employee creativity in the workplace. Managers should give employees opportunities for participation and foster a climate of fairness in the organization to mitigate the harmful consequences of abusive supervision.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study that examines the psychological distress-based mechanism in the relationship between abusive supervision and creativity while considering the interactive effects of distributive and procedural justice. It addresses an important research gap in the literature by proposing that organizational perceived distributive and procedural justice can mitigate the detrimental effects of abusive supervision.

People are living in a very rich and diversified information world. However, they are facing an explosion of information on social networking site (SNS) bombarding them every day. People get confused when they expose to similar, overloaded, ambiguous and misleading information. Unfortunately, the effect of information confusion on users' psychological outcome and behavioral intention has been absent in prior literature. Thus, this study investigates the relationship between information confusion and users' intention to stop using SNS with a moderated mediation effect of psychological distress and perceived novelty.

This study uses questionnaire survey to collect a sample data of 380 Facebook users in Vietnam. Structural equation modeling is used to test hypotheses in this study.

Empirical results show that information confusion has a positive influence on stop using intention. Furthermore, psychological distress is found to have a mediating effect in the link between information confusion and stop using intention. In addition, perceived novelty moderates the relationship between psychological distress and stop using intention. Perceived novelty also moderates the indirect effect of information confusion on stop using intention through psychological distress.

The influence of information confusion on users' psychological outcomes and behavioral intention has not been determined in prior literature. This study is one of the first studies that provide empirical evidence to clarify the relationship between information confusion and users' intention to stop using SNS. Furthermore, this study helps to clarify the mediating and moderating mechanism of psychological distress and perceived novelty in this relationship. By investigating the issue of information confusion and its impact on users in SNS environment, this study provides implications for researchers and practitioners regarding management and development of SNS.

This study aims to investigate the effects of workplace cyberbullying on creativity directly and through psychological distress. Furthermore, this study proposes that psychological capital (PsyCap) buffers the harmful effects of workplace cyberbullying on psychological distress and creativity.

The data were collected in two waves from 329 nurses working in four large public hospitals located in a metropolitan city of Pakistan. The data were analyzed through PROCESS (Model 8) using SPSS.

The results demonstrate that cyberbullying negatively affects creativity through increased psychological distress. The findings also explicate that PsyCap moderates the effects of cyberbullying on psychological distress such that the link was weak (vs strong) for those (victims) who had high (vs low) PsyCap.

This study recommends management to develop and promote PsyCap among employees because these positive resources help them to regulate their emotions and cognition to overcome negative consequences of cyberbullying and other workplace stressors.

Psychological distress as an underlying mechanism between cyberbullying and creativity as well as buffering effect of PsyCap is the novelty of the study.

Although it is well recognised that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent widespread social and economic changes impacted on the levels and distribution of physical health, there is very limited evidence on the social patterning of mental health in the countries that emerged. The aim of this paper is to assess levels of psychological distress and describe its demographic, social and economic correlates in eight former Soviet countries.Cross‐sectional surveys using multi‐stage random sampling were conducted in Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine. A standardised questionnaire was used for all countries, including the main outcome for this study of psychological distress, which consisted of 12 items on symptoms of psychological distress. Respondents who repor ted 10‐12 of the symptoms were considered to have a high psychological distress score. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was then used to investigate how demographic, social and economic factors were associated with a high psychological distress score.High psychological distress in seven of the eight countries ranges from 3.8% in Kazakhstan to 10% in Ukraine but was substantially higher (21.7%) in Armenia. Factors associated with psychological distress in the multivariate analysis included: being female; increasing age; incomplete secondary education; being disabled; experiencing two or more stressful events in the past year; lack of trust in people; lack of personal suppor t in crisis; being unemployed; and poor household economic situation.The study contributes evidence on the association of impoverishment and social isolation on psychological distress in countries of the former Soviet Union and highlights the impor tance of exploring ways of improving mental health by addressing its social determinants.