Financial Factors and Psychological Distress during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Poland

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many factors have simultaneously affected people's psychological distress (PD). The most commonly studied types of factors have been those relating to health risks involving SARS-CoV-2 infection and sociodemographic factors. However, financial changes at both the national and global levels and these changes' influences on people's personal finances constitute another group of factors with the potential to cause symptoms of anxiety and depression. A correlation study of 1135 working adults in Poland was conducted to analyze the roles of a wide range of financial variables in explaining the extent of people's PD during the pandemic. Three groups of financial factors predicted PD over and above sociodemographic variables and COVID-19 health-related factors: a person's objective financial situation, their subjective financial situation, and their individual financial disposition, the last of these being the most important. The present study adds to the current state of knowledge by showing that financial variables explain a significant portion of variance in PD over and above sociodemographic and COVID-19 health-related factors. Moreover, the study also identified individual financial variables that were capable of predicting people's psychological distress during the pandemic.