COVID-19 and Its Implications on Social Activity, Loneliness and Stigma

Currently, the world is experiencing a Coronavirus outbreak, COVID-19, which originated in mainland China in December 2019, spread rapidly to South Korea and Europe, Italy in particular, between January and March of 2020 and is currently spreading in all continents and has been recognized as a pandemic. It is of high importance to monitor how the trends in COVID-19 outbreak are shaping the social contexts and norms across communities and families. In a time in which individuals all over the world are experiencing quarantine, it is important to evaluate the potential surge of the phenomena of social anxiety, stigma, and of perceived fear and loneliness. Furthermore, it is critical to study interventions that aim to reduce each of these. The overall goal of this study is to evaluate the association of quarantine measures for COVID-19 and perceived anxiety, stigma and loneliness and to evaluate the efficacy of interventions in reducing anxiety, loneliness and perception of stigma induced by self-isolation during the outbreak. The hypotheses will be tested using ANOVA and multinomial logistic regressions. An alpha level of 0.01 will be used to account for multiple testing.