About the CovSocial Project
The CovSocial project is a multi-phase research project employing a multi-domain and multi-method approach to studying and reducing the negative psychosocial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in Berliners.
In the first phase of the project, we assessed changes in different aspects of mental health (depression, anxiety, worry, fears), resilience (optimism, coping strategy use, self-efficacy, resistance), and social cohesion (trust, belonging, interaction, participation) over the period of January 2020 to April 2021. In the second phase of the project, we tested the effectiveness of app-delivered socio-emotional and mindfulness-based interventions in reducing stress, loneliness, depression and anxiety, and in enhancing resilience, empathy and compassion during the pandemic.
The findings from the first phase of the project will help at identifying individuals who might be more at risk due to large-scale stressors, and what protective factors can help diminish the impact of such stressors and protect mental health. The findings from the second phase of the project will allow for the development of scalable psychological interventions aimed at improving resilience and social cohesion while lowering vulnerability during similar stressors of global scale, which will further improve our readiness for future global crises of such nature.
For latest updates on peer-reviewed publications, please see here.
To download a free report of our findings from phase 1, please see here.
To register for our online conference in December, please see here.
Longitudinal Study (Phase 1)
In the first phase, our participants (a sample of Berlin residents) completed several questionnaires around the topics of mental health, psychological resilience and social cohesion. The questions were related to general life circumstances, emotional well-being as well as daily social behaviour in the following periods:
- Shortly before the corona crisis (January 2020)
- During the first most intense restrictions in Germany (mid-March to mid-April 2020)
- When the restrictions were eased (June 2020)
- During the partial lockdown (November 2020)
- During the second lockdown (December 2020)
- When the second lockdown got extended (January 2021 – March/April 2021)
The first three timepoints were assessed retrospectively in September 2020. In addition, we collected genetic markers as part of Phase 1 to investigate whether these are linked to stress, resilience and social cohesion during the pandemic. Therefore, we collected saliva samples from some of our participants.
Intervention Study (Phase 2)
In the second phase of our study, we invited some of our participants from phase 1 to take part in two mobile app-delivered mental training programmes for psychosocial well-being. Full details of this phase of the study can be read in the study protocol paper.
More specifically, we compared two online 10-week mental training programs, one mindfulness-based and another socio-emotional partner-based Dyad program with each other. In both programs participants engaged in daily 12-minute exercises and weekly online coaching sessions with a team of professional mental teachers. The daily exercise in the mindfulness group consisted of attention-focused mindfulness meditations, and in the socio-emotional group involved practicing a dyadic partner exercise called Affect Dyad.
Both socio-emotional and mindfulness-based interventions are supposed to help reduce stress and loneliness and increase life satisfaction and well-being. The positive effects of similar mental training programmes have already been scientifically researched worldwide and have also been examined as part of larger intervention modules in the ReSource project, a large-scale research project conducted by Prof. Dr. Singer at the Max-Planck Society. In the CovSocial project phase 2, we measured the effects of the app-delivered interventions using various self-report, behavioural and biological markers.
