Indeed Death is nearer; Moderating Role of Resilience in the Relationship between Fear of COVID-19 and Death Anxiety

Purpose: To determine the moderating effect of resilience for Fear of COVID-19 in predicting death anxiety among COVID sufferers and general population of Pakistan. Methodology: A cross-sectional study was conducted on adults (N=300), COVID-19 sufferers (n=150) and general population (n=150) from 24th September 2021 to 10th June 2022. All participants who fulfilled the inclusion/exclusion criteria were included. Data collection was done by purposive sampling technique from different universities, institutions and hospitals of Pakistan. The questionnaires were filled out by participants, for this purpose revised death anxiety (RSAD), Connor-Davidson resilience (CD-RISC) and Fear of COVID-19 (FCV-19S) scales were used to access death anxiety, resilience and Fear of COVID-19. After data collection, data were used for further analysis using SPSS 21. Descriptive measurements were calculated for scales and subscales. Moderation analysis was used to find out moderating effect of resilience for fear of COVID-19 in predicting death anxiety among COVID-19 sufferers and general population. Findings: The alpha coefficient of all scales and subscales ranged from .64 to .93. Mean, standard deviation and skewness, kurtosis values fulfilled the assumption of normal distribution of data.  Moderating effect of resilience for fear of COVID-19 in predicting death anxiety, showed significant interaction effect of resilience and fear of COVID-19 on death anxiety only among COVID-19 sufferers, the interaction effect found to be explain 3.4% variance on death anxiety. The computation of slopes of model graph for these results indicates that t=1.34 (p>.001) for lower level of resilience, t=4.81 (p<.001) for middle level and t=5.67 (p<.001) for higher level. Values shows significance of moderation for middle and higher level of resilience among COVID-sufferers. A significant increase was observed in death anxiety with respect to increase in fear of COVID-19 at moderate and higher level of resilience. But moderating effect of resilience for fear of COVID-19 in predicting death anxiety among general population was non-significant. Recommendations: Providing training about prevention strategies of COVID-19 through media can help people to deal with it. Various strategies such as acceptance of anxiety and negative emotions, maintaining a healthy lifestyle, social contacts and fostering self-efficacy should be recommended to include in psychological interventions for treatment of death anxiety and effectively cope up with fear of COVID-19. It would be beneficial to include more targeted variables that were not available in this study, such as social benefits, social support, use of health, and welfare services.