The ongoing impact: A 4-wave longitudinal study on how loss and avoidance coping lead to long-term challenges after COVID

COVID-19 changed the world we live in. We need research to understand the challenges people are still experiencing. We used a longitudinal design to test the relationships among non-death loss, avoidance coping, and perceived COVID-19 impact before and after China’s dramatic zero-COVID policy reversal. We tracked 270 emerging adults who just graduated from college at four time-points from June 2022 to December 2023. Two waves were conducted before the end of zero-COVID policy; one wave was immediately after the policy ended (Dec. 2022); and one wave was one full year later. Non-death losses were consistently associated with increased perceived COVID-19 impact at later stages. This association remained consistent even one year after the end of zero-COVID policy. People tended to use more avoidance coping immediately after the policy transition, but it did not have longitudinal associations with perceived COVID-19 impact. Our findings suggest that non-death loss has a long-lasting psychological impact of COVID-19.