The socio-psychological consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are widespread, possibly affecting mental health not only now but into the future [1]. Although the population of Israel is known for its resilience to security-related crises, it is not known how they would face an epidemic threat. With the growing availability of the vaccine, it is important to deepen our understanding of the psycho-social distress and coping of the population. Hopefully, such understanding will lead to wide-scale interventions to help restore psychological equilibrium as the world moves towards learning to live with COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic could leave many people with psychological scars, such as depression [2] anxiety, stress, traumatic symptoms [3], and loneliness [4], which are common reactions to a health crisis. The pandemic raised the general anxiety levels [5]. Thus, uncertainties about the future, anxiety and fear may last even after COVID-19 is eradicated or contained. Loneliness as well, has been found to be a central risk factor for depression, anxiety, and comorbidity during the COVID-19 pandemic [4]. The widely adopted social and physical distancing, lockdowns, isolation and quarantine have not surprisingly resulted in severe psychiatric disorders [6], as did the emotional burden of loneliness [7]. However, mental health researchers suggest viewing the COVID-19 crisis from a broader trauma perspective [8]. Seen this way, infectious disease epidemics can be highly traumatic experiences for individuals and lead to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and chronic psychological distress, especially for those already vulnerable or who are most deeply impacted by the disease and its co-travellers [9].

The COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on people’s lives highlight the need to deepen our knowledge in the concepts of resilience and human resources and their impact on distress and coping. Personal Resilience is defined as a trajectory of healthy functioning after a highly adverse event [10]. Lahad [11] claims that some individuals have a unique resource repertoire that helps them deal with crises. Studies of personal resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic have shown a link between high personal resilience and decreased anxiety, distress, feelings of danger, depression and anxiety [12].

Community resilience is defined as “the community’s ability to withstand crises or disruptions” [13], and is another resource that may be supportive for individuals during a global pandemic, particularly when people were asked to remain in their physically close domain.

The Conservation of Resources theory (COR) [15] has often been adopted to study major and traumatic stress in crisis situations, and has been referenced as a framework for understanding stress in many studies. According to COR theory, people strive to retain, protect, and build resources and are threatened by the potential or actual loss of these valued resources. Resources may be material (e.g., money, housing), social (e.g., social support, status) or psychological (e.g., personal mastery, sense of autonomy) [15]. Loss of resources, or threat of such loss, is a crucial variable, predicting psychological distress, and will lead to investing more resources, making those already lacking in resources even more vulnerable to loss spirals [15]. Concrete primary-resource losses and secondary losses that occur later, were found to best predict psychological distress during major crisis [16].

COR theory also emphasizes resource gain, such that gain of important resources and associated positive emotions may increase in value in the face of loss. When resource loss occurs, the ability to gain resources becomes increasingly important, providing an emotional respite and the ability to achieve goals [17]. As such, following a crisis, resource loss is seen as more impactful than resource gain, which is seen to have more modest, even if important influence.

Despite its important contribution, the association between COR theory and the COVID-19 pandemic has been studied only to a limited extent [18–21]. The physical health, economic and socio-psychological consequences of COVID-19 inevitably result in multiple forms of loss of resources (e.g., loss of a loved one, health, financial stability, job, social connection and sense of security), which may increase the likelihood of developing traumatic symptoms and psychological distress [9].

Among the studies examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health, the impact of resource loss and gain (COR) has received little attention. To fill this gap, the present study examined COR and its association with personal and community resilience as well as psychological distress.

The study objectives are:

(1) To examine the association between COR and psychological distress related to COVID-19,

Hypotheses:

Adjusted for demographic and psychological variables, resource loss will be associated with an increase in psychological distress, and resource gain will be associated with an increase in resilience factors.

The Conservation of Resources theory [15], emphasizing the association of the potential or actual loss or gain of resources with individuals’ well-being, was supported in the current study of the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined the associations between resources loss and gain, psychological distress, and resilience factors among Jewish adults in Israel at the early stage of COVID-19 when the country was in lockdown and vaccines were a far-off dream.

The COVID-19 pandemic can be highly stressful for all individuals. However, our study suggests that those who suffered more were females, people with lower-income, more secular affiliation, or a person with special needs dependent on them.

Our findings correspond with the psycho-social disturbances that were found in previous studies, particularly among those who had low socioeconomic status, job loss, or unemployment status following traumatic exposure [32]. In addition, they reflect reduced access to psycho-social and financial resources [33]. Resources like job and income are part of the individual’s self-identity, and their loss may reduce self-esteem, sense of security and sense of meaning in life. From this perspective, we can identify the COVID-19 pandemic as an existential crisis [34].

Level of religiosity was found to be negatively associated with traumatic symptoms. Religions can create a sense of meaning and trust in high powers [35]. Our study showed that spirituality seems to play a role in alleviating suffering and minimizing the consequences of social isolation [36].

During COVID-19, families are under multiple-stressors: trying to adapt to the uncertainty caused by the lockdowns, the fear for their members’ health, experiencing losses and the challenges of strengthening vital bonds, and overcoming difficulties [37]. Our results suggest that families with a dependent member, and of lower income, were more vulnerable than others. Preexisting vulnerabilities within families increase susceptibility to psycho-social disruptions during the COVID-19 pandemic [38]. In our study we found that large, religious, and upper-middle-class families have been able to gain more resources, comparing with low-class families with a dependent or disabled family member.

Being a female was found to be a risk factor for reporting more traumatic symptoms [39]. On the other hand, women reported higher resource gain scores than men. A possible hypothesis for these findings suggests that women’s greater tendency to ruminative thinking and their coping style, centered on emotion, facilitates both stress and growth [40]. Another possible explanation for women’s higher ability to feel stress and to perceive resource gain is that during the COVID-19 pandemic, the domestic challenges became the focus of coping, and there, traditionally, the woman has more tasks that were intensified during the lockdown situation (e.g. looking after kids and close relatives, cooking, etc.). Based on these mixed findings we would like to stress that it reflects the first wave of the epidemic, and it is still unclear how women will be affected by the epidemic over time.

Our first hypothesis, that a strong association will be found between resource loss and psychological distress levels, was confirmed by the current study. Furthermore it indicated that the psychological variables, especially loss of valued resources (such as hope, sense of meaning or purpose in life), had the most significant contribution as a risk factor for COVID-19-related traumatic symptoms. Additionally, significant positive correlations were found between resource loss and psychological distress such as traumatic symptoms related to COVID-19: loneliness, stress, and COVID-19-related concerns) about the spread of the coronavirus, changes in daily routine, personal and relative’s health and threaten on life).

Our findings thus support the Conservation of Resources theory (COR) which emphasizes that loss of resources can challenge the ability of individuals to cope with and recover from traumatic situations [15]. In a stressful global pandemic, multiple types of loss threatened or caused a depletion of people’s resources, and was associated with an increase in stress levels. Psycho-social resource loss can be seen as a spiral of deficit the longer the crisis persists and affects other areas of life [41].

Our findings suggest that resource loss was highly associated with loneliness, a crucial factor in the COVID-19 epidemic [42]. Of all the losses examined in the current study, loss of hope had the highest association with COVID-19-related traumatic symptoms. Hope as a resilience factor might reduce psychological distress [43], and hopeful people are better able to respond to challenging situations.

Previous studies have shown a chain mediation model using other variables, showing that health information and the perceived impact of the pandemic were mediators that contributed to mental health [44], and other variables (such as coping strategies) have mediation effect on our research variables [45]. Further studies will focus on the identification the moderating and mediating variables of our study’s variables over time.

Our second hypothesis focused on the association between resource gain and resilience factors, was also confirmed. A significant positive correlation was found between resource gain, community resilience, and personal resilience. As predicted by the COR theory, resource gain’s influence was substantively less powerful than that of resource loss [23]. However, our findings suggest that overall, the Israeli Jewish population exhibited a greater resource gain than resource loss in the first wave of the COVID-19.

The correlation found between resource gain and resilience factors highlights the importance of resource gain aspect when dealing with crises. People who had higher resource gain reported doing more enjoyable or valuable things and having a sense of purpose in life. These results are supported by the post-traumatic growth concept (PTG) [46], which focuses on positivity when individuals experience adversity and contains a transformative potential, whereby a person grows in appreciation of life, envisioning new possibilities, personal strength, and spiritual understanding [46].

Personal and community resilience were found to be the best protective factors for decreased psychological distress. Our findings support other studies that presented the crucial role of resilience factors, especially of personal resilience, on mental health when coping with COVID-19 threats [47].

Resilience refers to the extent to which people could manage to create and sustain resource gains, it acted as a vital protector that enables the ability to “bounce forward” despite the pandemic challenges and maintain functioning.

As data for this study were collected at the early stages of the pandemic, the rate of illness and death at the time was still low compared to later stages. Future work should follow these measures repeatedly and address the association between aspects such as COVID-19 morbidity and mortality and changing socio-economic status on the variables measured in this study.