Abstract:
Relying on a unique survey of more than 15,000 respondents conducted from June to August 2020 in Italy, we show that priming religiosity in healthcare workers decreases the level of self‐assessed mental distress experienced during the first wave of the COVID‐19. We show that priming religiosity decreases self‐assessed mental distress by 9.5%. Consistent with the idea that religiosity serves as a coping mechanism, this effect is stronger for the more impacted categories (e.g., hospital workers) and for respondents facing more stressful situations, such as being reassigned due to the COVID‐19 emergency or working in a COVID‐19‐related specialty (e.g., emergency care), among others. Moreover, higher effects occurs also among physicians who self‐classify as religious, while this distinction does not apply for nurses.
