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Mitigating Mental Health Burden of Youth During COVID-19 Through Resilience and Hope: Evidences from India and Germany

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Handbook of Youth Development

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Abstract

In the global crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, young professionals and graduating students experience considerable psychological adversity due to the uncertainty surrounding their futures. Given the positive psychological outcomes and the potential to alleviate stress, we examine the role of resilience and hope in causing a substantial variance in the stress response to anticipation of crisis among Indians living in India and Germany. Resilience, hope, crisis apprehension, and the psychological response to the COVID-19 pandemic were measured among participants from India and Germany (n = 650) via an online survey using non-probability convenient sampling. Parallel mediation and conditional indirect effects showcase the differential roles of resilience and hope among socio-culturally similar but geographically divergent groups. Hope mediates the effect of pandemic-led crisis apprehension on perceived stress among those residing in India; resilience operates to mitigate stress among those from Germany. Findings highlight the contradistinctive role of resilience and hope in reducing stress and imply an urgent need for promotion of ameliorative practices. Resilience effectively mitigates the psychological burden of the COVID-19 crisis and can be promoted to reskill individuals; however, elevating hope in a crisis obligates prudence.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Work and Organizational Psychologist, Muenster, Germany

    Tusharika Mukherjee

  2. Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports (MYAS), Government of India (GOI), Tamil Nadu, Pennalur, Sriperumbudur, 602 105, India

    Sibnath Deb

  3. Department of Psychology, CHRIST (Deemed to Be University), Bengaluru, India

    Shayana Deb

Authors
  1. Tusharika Mukherjee
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  2. Sibnath Deb
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  3. Shayana Deb
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Correspondence to Tusharika Mukherjee .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Applied Psychology, Pondicherry University (A Central University), Kalapet, Pondicherry, India

    Sibnath Deb

  2. Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Shayana Deb

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Mukherjee, T., Deb, S., Deb, S. (2023). Mitigating Mental Health Burden of Youth During COVID-19 Through Resilience and Hope: Evidences from India and Germany. In: Deb, S., Deb, S. (eds) Handbook of Youth Development. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4969-4_29

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-4969-4_29

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