Psychological and physical distress in Italian people during COVID-19 pandemic: one year later

Abstract: The aim of this study was to evaluate the major life changes that Italian people experienced after one year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We assessed the psychological and physical impact of COVID-19 within one year of the pandemic situation, and its possible correlation with the positive COVID-19 trend in the Italian region. We invited Italian people to complete a cross-sectional, online survey within a three-week period from 14 March to 4 April 2021. The survey collected data on the participants’ stress and physical levels, attitude, perceived control, norms, personal and professional backgrounds, and place of stay in the last year. We used Student’s t-test and the software package GRETL for Windows to assess the association between the study outcome variables and the explanatory variables (stress, attitude, perceived control, and norms). All participants who declared a level of physical stress in their answer suffered from psychological stress, but not vice versa. The result to be highlighted is that this level of stress was found more in women and in the age range of 21–45 years