Are We Done Yet? Psychological and Remedial Impact of Optimism on COVID-19 Fear and Perceived Stress

Abstract

This inquiry explores how optimism affects COVID-19 fear and feelings of stress among young Indian women after the pandemic. The sample consisted of the test scores of 199 young women between the ages of 18 and 21. All of them lived in the Noida area of UP, India, and were first-year students at a private university. The study used reliable and valid psychometric tools to evaluate how stressed, afraid of COVID, and optimistic they were. Based on the sample's parameters, Spearman's association was used to analyse the relationship between the study variables, followed by linear regression, which was deployed to understate impact. The correlational analysis showed that optimism, stress, and fear associated with COVID were all strongly linked. Furthermore, optimism was identified as a significant predictor of COVID fear and stress, explaining about 3.3 per cent and 25.6 per cent of the negative variance, respectively. The findings recognised a positive role for optimism in reducing stress and pandemic-associated fear or apprehension, which can be a base for further analysis to ensure better mental health service delivery.