Comparison of Spirituality, Resilience and Self-Compassion in Students with and without COVID-19 Anxiety

Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) as the biggest threat to public health in 2020, is a two-year period that has caused many problems to people around the world. The aim of this study was to compare spirituality, resilience and self-compassion in students with high and low levels of COVID-19 anxiety. The method of the present study is descriptive causal-comparative. The statistical population of the study consisted of male and female students of the Faculty of Literature and Humanities of the University of Guilan in the academic year 2020-2021. Participants were selected by available methods from each group of 135 students with high levels of COVID-19 anxiety and 135 students with low levels of COVID-19 anxiety. Students were assessed using COVID-19 Anxiety Scale Wheaton et al. (2012), spirituality Parsian & Dunning (2009), resilience Connor & Davidson (2003), and Self-Compassion Questionnaire Neff (2003). Data analysis was performed using multivariate analysis of variance by SPSS software version 24. Findings from multivariate analysis of variance showed that there was a significant difference between students with and without COVID-19 anxiety in terms of spirituality, resilience and self-compassion; So that the average scores of spirituality, resilience and self-compassion in students with COVID-19 anxiety are lower compared to students without COVID-19 anxiety (P<0.001). According to the findings of the present study, students with high levels of COVID-19 anxiety have less spirituality and resilience, which in turn aggravates the symptoms in individuals. On the other hand, it was found that self-judgment, feelings of isolation and over-assimilation are high in people with COVID-19 anxiety; For this reason, psychologists and counselors need to pay more attention to these areas in order to reduce the unreasonable severity of anxiety in students.