Couples participating in a family-oriented enhancement program led by researchers at the University of Georgia prior to the COVID-19 pandemic were less affected by pandemic-related stressors, according to a new study.
Researchers at UGA’s Center for Family Research (CFR) found that stress during the pandemic predicted an increase in depression among Black American adults. However, the degree to which pandemic-related stress predicted depression differed based on the quality of their romantic relationship before the pandemic.
Those participants whose relationship quality had improved before the pandemic were protected from these effects. In other words, improved relationship quality helped buffer the negative effects of COVID-19 related stressors—like financial and social disruption, illness and death—on individuals’ depressive symptoms.
There is growing evidence that stress from environmental and social pressures are particularly salient for Black Americans, affecting their physical and mental health. During the pandemic, those stressors were especially profound. Black Americans experienced increased risk of infection, hospitalization and death due to COVID-19 relative to White Americans, and greater job loss and food insecurity among other stressors.
“We knew that the pandemic was having a profound effect on families everywhere,” said lead author, Dr. Steven Beach, a Regents’ Professor of Psychology at UGA and CFR director, “and so asking families how they were doing well into the pandemic seemed particularly important.”
The paper, “Strengthening couple functioning promotes resilience to COVID-19-related stressors among Black Americans,” was published in the Journal of Family Psychology and recently chosen as an Editor’s Choice article.
Beach and colleagues assessed the benefits of the ProSAAF intervention as a moderator of stress effects from the pandemic. Families have participated in the longitudinal study for nearly 10 years and completed surveys during an unplanned wave of assessment early in the pandemic.
ProSAAF, which was developed at CFR, helps couples with several aspects of family life including parenting their children and the relationship between partners. It includes topics like understanding each other’s reactions to stress and improving communication.
“Although the research is not definitive regarding specific elements of the ProSAAF program that created resilience to the pandemic,” Beach explained, “families that participated talked to each other more and listened more, and they had an increased feeling of security with each other. These were important protective factors during the pandemic.”
The researchers speculate that efforts to improve a family’s ability to work together as a team, “increases their resilience to many stressors, including some big and unexpected ones like the pandemic,” Beach said. The findings suggest that programs such as ProSAAF and other interventions that improve couple and family functioning may help individuals better manage external stressors, and, therefore, avoid some of the psychological and physical effects from them.
