Two Years After the Beginning of COVID-19: Comparing Families Who Had or Did not Have Patients with COVID-19 on Health Beliefs and Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms

Objective: This study aimed to compare health beliefs and obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS) in families with (FIM+) or without an infected member (FIM–) two years after the beginning of COVID-19. Additionally, this research intended to predict a decrease in OCS from baseline (T1) to 40 days later (T2) based on health beliefs. Method: In a longitudinal survey, 227 participants in two groups, including FIM+ (n = 98; M = 30.44; SD = 5.39) and FIM– (n = 129; M = 29.24; SD = 4.93), were selected through purposive sampling. They responded to measurements consisting of demographic characteristics, the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory-Revised (OCI-R), Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9), Impact of Event Scale-Revised (IES-R), and COVID-19 Health Belief Questionnaire (COVID-19-HBQ) at the final assessment phase (T2). To investigate differences between the two groups and predict OCS changes from T1 to T2, data were analyzed using Chi-squared, t-tests, U-Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis, Pearson correlations, and linear regression analyses. Results: At T1, FIM+ demonstrated significantly greater OCS, health beliefs, posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTS), and depressive symptoms than FIM–. Furthermore, FIM+ showed a decrease in OCS from T1 to T2 after its infected member recovered from COVID-19 (P 0.001). A decrease in OCS was correlated with a decrease in perceived susceptibility, severity, and barriers. Lack of a vulnerable family member, lower educational attainment, and being a primary caregiver were associated with a greater decrease in OCS. Changes in perceived severity and self-efficacy accounted for 17% of variation in OCS. Conclusion: Even two years after the onset of the pandemic, COVID-19 not only impacts the life of patients with COVID 19 but family members who care for such patients respond to the disease by engaging in excessive health behaviors in the form of OCS.