Perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and adolescents' depression symptoms: The moderating role of character strengths.

The outbreak of COVID-19 could increase adolescents' psychological distress and have a detrimental effect on their mental health. However, the negative effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescents' mental health might be moderated by their existing psychological resources. The present study sought to investigate whether the relationship between adolescents' perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and their depression symptoms was alleviated by their character strengths. A total of 617 adolescents were recruited and completed the online survey during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results indicated that adolescents' perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic was significantly positively correlated with their depression symptoms. Character strengths were significantly negatively correlated with adolescents' perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and their depression symptoms. Moreover, the moderating effect of character strengths on the relationship between adolescents' perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and their depression symptoms was significant. Therefore, adolescents' character strengths as a protective factor could buffer the effect of perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic on their depression symptoms and contribute to maintaining their mental health.

Introduction

COVID-19, which poses a severe threat to global public health, is spreading and has negatively affected individual physical and psychological health. Recent research has indicated that the spread of COVID-19 may be decreasing adolescents' mental health (Hawes et al., 2021). However, the negative effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescents' mental health might be alleviated by their existing psychological resources, such as their character strengths. The present study aimed to investigate whether adolescents' character strengths acted as a protective factor to buffer the effect of perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic on their depression symptoms.

Perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and depression symptoms

Perceived stress is a psychological state that refers to the degree to which individuals appraise their experienced life events as uncontrollable, unpredictable, and overloading and determines their response to environmental stressors (Cohen et al., 1983). In line with the transactional stress model (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), objective stressful events affect individuals' reactions and adaption via their cognitive appraisal of those stressors, i.e., their perceived stress, which occurs when individuals perceive the demands of environmental events as exceeding their capacity to adapt (Cohen et al., 1995). Different perceived stress among individuals and the subsequent adoption of coping strategies are the explanatory mechanisms underlying the relationship between actual stressors and outcomes (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Individuals with a higher global level of perceived stress may have more difficulty realizing positive cognition, emotion, and behaviors and are at greater risk for health problems (Lindholdt et al., 2021; Yan et al., 2021). Depression symptoms, which feature a combination of depressed mood states, including feelings of sadness, worthlessness, hopelessness, and helplessness (Li & Mei, 2002), constitute one of the most common mental health problems and are related to social maladjustment and physical symptoms among children and adolescents (Makol & Polo, 2018). Prior research has examined the relationship between perceived stress, as measured by the Perceived Stress Scale based on the transactional stress model (Cohen et al., 1983; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984), and adolescents' depression symptoms and showed that perceived stress is positively related to adolescents' self-reported depression symptoms; that is, adolescents with a higher level of perceived stress reported more depression symptoms (Felton et al., 2017; Lathren et al., 2019). The spread of COVID-19 is a highly stressful event that has exposed adolescents to threats to their health and a long duration of quarantine, which could increase mental distress, such as depression symptoms (Hawes et al., 2021). Therefore, a higher level of perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic might lead to more depression symptoms in adolescents, which has not been reported in previous studies.

Character strengths and depression symptoms

Character strengths are morally valued positive traits that are reflected in thoughts, emotions, and behaviors (Peterson & Seligman, 2004). Peterson and Seligman (2004) suggested a classification of character strengths known as Values in Action (VIA), which include 24 character strengths, each of which is organized under one of the six virtues: wisdom and knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. The VIA Inventory of Strengths for Youth (VIA-Youth), which is based on the VIA classification system, was developed to assess character strengths among adolescents (Park & Peterson, 2005; (Blanca et al., 2018). In empirical studies using VIA-Youth, four-factor, five-factor, and three-factor solutions of character strengths have been reported and different dimensions of VIA-Youth are commonly used to describe adolescents' character strengths (Park & Peterson, 2006; Ruch et al., 2014; Park et al., 2017). Additionally, the total score for 24 character strengths has also been used to assess the global character strengths of adolescents in previous studies (Liu & Wang, 2021; Zhang et al., 2016).

Employing the VIA-Youth, empirical studies have found that character strengths could promote positive behavioral, mental, and emotional developmental outcomes in adolescents (Datu & Mateo, 2020; Shoshani & Slone, 2013; Wagner, 2019; Weber & Ruch, 2012). With regard to depression symptoms, some character strengths were found to be inversely related to individual depression symptoms (Kim et al., 2018; Tehranchi et al., 2018). In addition, prior work has indicated that interventions targeting character strengths can reduce depression symptoms in adults (Schutte & Malouff, 2019). In the context of the key resource theory (Hobfoll, 2002; Thoits, 1994) and the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions (Fredrickson, 2001), individuals with positive psychological resources are prone to being more capable of selecting, altering, and implementing their other resources to decrease mental distress, enabling them to flourish. Numerous studies have demonstrated that adolescents' psychological resources, including emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and resilience, can alleviate their depression symptoms (Anyan & Hjemdal, 2016; Chi et al., 2019; Davis & Humphrey, 2012). Therefore, character strengths, as an important psychological resource, might be negatively related to adolescents' depression symptoms. However, no study to date has reported the relationship between adolescents' character strengths and depression symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moderating role of character strengths

Previous studies have demonstrated a positive correlation between perceived stress and adolescents' depression symptoms (Lorenzo-Blanco & Unger, 2015). However, as mentioned above, the relationship between perceived stress and adolescents' depression symptoms might be affected by their existing psychological resources. The stress-buffering model suggested that some individuals who possess high social or psychological resources are less susceptible to the impact of environmental stressors and could be more inclined to dynamically adjust their adaptability to stress, subsequently experiencing fewer negative outcomes (Cohen & Wills, 1985). Specifically, those positive characteristics benefit individuals experiencing both high and low levels of perceived stress but may exert a significantly greater effect under high-stress conditions (Rueger et al., 2016; Stroebe & Stroebe, 1997).

Character strengths, as positive individual characteristics, could buffer the negative effect of stress on adaptation and promote the ability of adolescents to cope with stress more effectively (Sueki, 2020). Several studies have emphasized that character strengths are a positive factor and could protect against the negative effect of stress on individuals' mental health (Duan et al., 2015; Duan & Guo, 2015). Specifically, strengths could be beneficial for resolving conflicts caused by trauma via cognitive, emotional, and behavioral regulation (Duan & Guo, 2015). Similarly, adolescents with high levels of character strengths might be prone to selecting positive methods of coping with the challenges caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. More importantly, the protective effect of character strengths might also affect the process of appraising stressors, as suggested by the transactional stress model (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984; Lee et al., 2019). Individuals with high levels of character strengths might have a reduced perception of the level of stress than those with low levels of character strengths and might therefore exhibit more adaptive psychological reactions (Wood et al., 2011). In this vein, adolescents with high levels of character strengths might perceive stress less and experience fewer negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on their mental health, including depression symptoms. Taken together, character strengths might be a protective factor against the effect of perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic on depression symptoms in adolescents, thereby reducing their risk of suicide. However, few studies have examined this issue.

Present study

In summary, the present study aimed to examine the moderating effect of character strengths on the association between adolescents' perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and their depression symptoms (Fig. 1 ). Specifically, we hypothesized that adolescents' perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic would be positively linked with their depression symptoms. Moreover, we expected that the moderating effect of adolescents' character strengths on this relationship would be significant, i.e., character strengths could alleviate the effect of perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescents' depression symptoms.

Fig. 1

The hypothesized model.

Methods

Participants

In the present study, 617 adolescents (M = 13.11, SD = 2.25; 291 female) were recruited from six provinces affected by the COVID-19 epidemic in China. We advertised on the forums of a primary school and a middle school in each province, and then students in grades 5–10 were randomly selected. After our Institutional Review Board approved the study, informed consent was obtained from the parents. Then, the participants completed the online survey anonymously in their spare time. Based on the requirement that no item on the online survey should have missing data, all responses of the 617 adolescents were included in our analyses. The participants' family SES was measured based on family wealth (assessed by the number of computers, televisions, and cars in the household) and maximum parental education (Pang et al., 2013). Most participants' parents had less than a high school degree (75.2% mothers, 71% fathers). Regarding family wealth, 61.3% of the families had one or more computers, 90.8% had one or more televisions, and 67.1% had one or more cars. Everyone who participated in our study was given 10 Yuan as compensation.

Measures

Perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic

The Chinese version of the Perceived Stress Scale-14 (CPSS-14) was used to assess adolescents' perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic (Cohen et al., 1983; Yang & Huang, 2003). This scale is comprised of 14 items rated on a five-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 = It never occurred to 5 = It was always. To measure adolescents' perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, we revised all the items on the scale (e.g., “Since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak, I have felt that I have been unable to control the important things in my life”). The CPSS-14 consists of two subscales: perceived stress and perceived lack of control. The total score obtained by combining the scores on the two subscales has been widely used to represent overall perceived stress (Du et al., 2020; Ye et al., 2018). A higher total score indicates a higher level of perceived stress. In the present study, the CPSS-14 showed good validity (CFI = 0.95. TLI = 0.93, RMSEA = 0.069) and reliability (Cronbach's α = 0.70).

Depression symptoms

The depression subscale from the Chinese version of the General Health Questionnaire-20 (GHQ-20) was used to assess adolescents' depression symptoms (Goldberg, 1972; Li & Mei, 2002). This scale is comprised of 5 items rated on a four-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 = It never occurred to 4 = It was always. A higher total score indicates more depression symptoms. The depression subscale showed good reliability (Jiang & Li, 2019), and the Cronbach's α coefficient for the depression subscale was 0.78 in the present study.

Character strengths

The VIA Inventory of Strengths for Youth (VIA-Youth) was used to assess the adolescents' character strengths (www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu) (Park & Peterson, 2005). Liu and Wang (2021) reported a revised version of VIA-Youth that consists of 121 items rated on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = very much unlike me to 5 = very much like me, and the total score for the 24 strengths is used as an index of global character strengths. A higher total score indicates a higher level of global character strength. In the present study, the revised version of VIA-Youth showed good validity (CFI = 0.94. TLI = 0.92, RMSEA = 0.079) and reliability (Cronbach's α = 0.93).

Analytic strategy

In the present study, SPSS software version 21.0 (IBM, Armonk, NY, USA) was used to conduct the following statistical analyses. First, preliminary analyses, including descriptive statistical analyses and correlation analyses between the study variables, were conducted. Second, all continuous variables were standardized, and the interaction term was computed from these standardized scores. Age, sex, and family SES were included as control variables in our analyses. The interactive effect of perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and character strengths (perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic × character strengths) on adolescents' depression symptoms was examined by hierarchical multiple regression analysis. The control variables were entered in the first step. The main effects of perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and character strengths were entered in the second step. The interaction term was entered in the third step. Moreover, we conducted the simple slope analysis proposed by Aiken and West (1991) to further analyze the moderating role of character strengths.

Results

Preliminary analyses

The descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations are presented in Table 1 . As shown in Table 1, the correlation analysis demonstrated that perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic was positively correlated with adolescents' depression symptoms (r = 0.48, p < 0.01). Moreover, global character strengths were negatively correlated with perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic (r = −0.38, p < 0.01) and adolescents' depression symptoms (r = −0.47, p < 0.01). The results revealed good reliability of the study variables (between 0.70 and 0.93).

Table 1

Means, standard deviations, and correlations of the main study variables.

Study variables	1	2	3	4	5	6
1 Sex	–
2 Age	0.03	–
3 Family SES	−0.02	−0.18⁎⁎	–
4 Perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic	−0.01	0.03	−0.06	–
5 Character strengths	−0.09⁎	−0.02	0.12⁎⁎	−0.38⁎⁎	–
6 Depression symptoms	−0.05	0.06	−0.02	0.48⁎⁎	−0.47⁎⁎	–
Max	2.00	17.00	22.00	62.00	116.77	20.00
Min	1.00	10.00	5.00	18.00	35.67	5.00
M	1.53	13.11	10.10	38.76	88.91	9.30
SD	0.50	2.25	2.57	6.91	14.00	3.51
Ske	−0.11	0.36	0.80	−0.44	−0.17	0.50
Kur	−1.99	−1.28	1.51	0.53	0.01	−0.39

Note. N = 617. Gender was coded 1 for females and 2 for males.

p < 0.05.

p < 0.01.

Moderating effect of character strengths

As shown in Table 2 , the results of the hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that the interactive effect of perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and global character strengths on adolescents' depression symptoms was significant (β = −0.07, p < 0.05).

Table 2

The interactive effect of perceived stress and character strengths predicting depression symptoms.

Predictors	Depression symptoms
	Model 1 (ΔR2 = 0.01)				Model 2 (ΔR2 = 0.33)				Model 3 (ΔR2 = 0.01)
	β	SE	t	p	β	SE	t	p	β	SE	t	p
Sex	−0.10	0.08	−1.26	0.21	−0.15	0.07	−2.31	0.02	−0.15	0.07	−2.23	0.03
Age	0.03	0.02	1.37	0.17	0.02	0.02	1.45	0.15	0.02	0.02	1.50	0.13
SES	−0.01	0.02	−0.34	0.74	0.02	0.01	1.41	0.16	0.02	0.01	1.38	0.17
Perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic					0.34	0.04	9.67	< 0.01	0.36	0.04	9.95	<0.01
Character strengths					−0.35	0.04	−9.80	< 0.01	−0.34	0.04	−9.55	<0.01
Perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic × character strengths									−0.07	0.03	−2.22	0.03

Note. N = 617.

Subsequently, we conducted a simple slope analysis, which compared the effects of high levels of character strengths and low levels of character strengths on the relationship between perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and adolescents' depression symptoms. High levels of character strengths were defined as 1 SD above the mean, while low levels of character strengths were defined as 1 SD below the mean. The results suggested that high levels of perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic (mean + 1 SD) might be associated with lower levels of depression symptoms in adolescents with high levels of character strengths (β = 0.29, p < 0.01) than in those with low levels of character strengths (β = 0.43, p < 0.01); that is, character strengths might buffer the effect of perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescents' depression symptoms (Fig. 2 ).

Fig. 2

The interactive effect of perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and character strengths on depression symptoms. PS = perceived stress. CS = character strengths.

Discussion

As expected, the findings of the present study indicated that perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic was significantly positively correlated with adolescents' depression symptoms, while character strengths were significantly negatively correlated with adolescents' perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and depression symptoms. Importantly, character strengths moderated the relationship between perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and depression symptoms in adolescents.

The present study indicated that perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic was positively correlated with adolescents' depression symptoms. High levels of perceived stress, as suggested in previous studies, can harm adolescents' mental health (Giota & Gustafsson, 2017; Beaver et al., 2012) and even their physical health (Cohen et al., 2007). Similarly, during the COVID-19 pandemic, high perceived levels of stress of COVID-19 was related to more depression symptoms in adolescents. Adolescents who appraised stressful changes caused by this traumatic event as being more threatening were prone to more depression symptoms.

The present study found that character strengths were inversely correlated with adolescents' depression symptoms. As the key resource theory (Hobfoll, 2002; Thoits, 1994) and the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions (Fredrickson, 2001) suggest, positive psychological resources are helpful for maintaining mental health and social adaptation. Prior studies have indicated that character strengths are an important resource and benefit adolescents' mental health (Datu & Mateo, 2020). In the present study, character strengths were found to be negatively related to adolescents' depression symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. As previous studies suggested, high levels of character strengths could be beneficial for adolescents' problem solving skills and adaptation ability (Hellman & Gwinn, 2017; Marco et al., 2016). Therefore, culturing character strengths could facilitate the flourishing of children (Park et al., 2017; Park & Peterson, 2005) and protect them from depression symptoms or other mental health problems.

More importantly, our study found that character strengths could moderate the relationship between perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and adolescents' depression symptoms. In the context of the stress-buffering model, the degree to which individuals appraise stressors as uncontrollable, unpredictable, and overloading and the coping strategies they utilize are largely affected by the resources they have to manage the stressful situation (Cohen & Wills, 1985). Character strengths, which are a positive psychological resource, could buffer the negative effect of stress on adaptation (Sueki, 2020). Specifically, character strengths might alleviate the effect of perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescents' depression symptoms by promoting effective coping with stressful demands and the negative changes resulting from the pandemic. Moreover, prior research suggested that high levels of character strengths are significantly linked to decreased stress (Garcia-Castro et al., 2019). Therefore, it might be the case that adolescents' character strengths could benefit their mental health via the reduction of perceived stress, i.e., high levels of character strengths might perceive stress less and predispose adolescents to perceive the changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic as relatively less harmful factors.

The findings of our study could add to our theoretical understanding and have practical implications. Our study indicated the protective role of character strengths in the relationship between perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and adolescents' depression symptoms, which enriches the stress-buffering model and provides a reference for further relevant empirical investigations. Additionally, our findings have a direct implication for supporting adolescents' mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic and other traumatic events. Developing adolescents' character strengths in daily life has potential protective value against the negative effect of severely stressful events on adaptation.

Several limitations of our study should be considered. First, the present study was cross-sectional and cannot determine causal relationships among perceived stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, character strengths, and adolescents' depression symptoms. Future studies should employ a longitudinal design to examine the moderating effect of character strengths. Second, the data might involve subjectivity due to self-reporting by adolescents in this study. More objective methods should be employed in the future. Finally, we considered global character strengths rather than focusing on one or more virtues or character strengths. Although using global character strengths as a study variable has advantages, the effects of individual virtues and character strengths should be explored in future studies.

In summary, character strengths as positive characteristics could buffer the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on adolescents' depression symptoms. Developing adolescents' character strengths might be a practicable way of maintaining and improving their mental health during a public health emergency.

Funding

This research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation Grant of China Grant (31971004), and the Research Program Funds of the Collaborative Innovation Center Assessment toward Basic Education at (2018-05-004-BZPK01), awarded to Zhenhong Wang.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Qianwen Liu: Investigation, Methodology, Software, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Writing – review & editing. Zhenhong Wang: Conceptualization, Investigation, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Supervision.