The COVID-19 pandemic and the many associated socio-economic changes constitute a stressful event that required adaptation to new, dynamic, and often threatening conditions. According to the literature, coping strategies are one of the factors that determine a person’s degree of adaptation to stressful situations. A systematic review and meta-analysis was performed on the relationship between religious coping and selected indicators of mental health. Due to the large amount of data, this work has been divided into two parts: this first part discusses positive mental health indicators, while the second discusses negative mental health indicators (Pankowski & Wytrychiewicz-Pankowska, 2023). A systematic review of PubMed, Science Direct, the Cochrane Library, Google Scholar, the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, and Google Scholar databases was carried out. In addition to the synthesis of information obtained from the research, a meta-analysis of correlation was also performed to determine the strengths of the relationships between the analysed variables, and selected moderators were assessed using meta-regression. Quality of life, well-being, satisfaction with life, happiness, and post-traumatic growth were the positive mental health indicators considered. Meta-analyses indicated a statistically significant relationship between positive religious coping and flourishing (well-being) with overall correlation values of 0.35 [0.30; 0.40]. Further calculations also indicated a relationship between negative religious coping and flourishing − 0.25 [− 0.34; − 0.15]. Data synthesis shows associations between religious coping and such indicators as satisfaction with life and post-traumatic growth, but these issues require further investigation.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the many associated socio-economic changes constitute a stressful event that required adaptation to new, dynamic, and often threatening conditions. According to the literature, coping strategies are one of the factors that determine a person’s degree of adaptation to stressful situations. A systematic review and meta-analysis was performed on the relationship between religious coping and selected indicators of mental health. Due to the large amount of data, this work has been divided into two parts: Part I discussed the positive mental health indicators (Pankowski & Wytrychiewicz-Pankowska, 2023), while this Part II discusses negative mental health indicators. A systematic review of the databases of Science Direct, EBSCO, Cochrane, PubMed, and Google Scholar identified 33 articles related to the severity of depressive symptoms: 30 to anxiety, 23 to stress, 1 related to PTSD symptoms and peritraumatic stress, and 5 related to general negative mental health. The limitations of the research as well as further directions for exploration are discussed.Clinical trial registration This Review was pre-registered at OSF: osf.io/54ygr (https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/GMNFV).

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many factors have simultaneously affected people’s psychological distress (PD). The most commonly studied types of factors have been those relating to health risks involving SARS-CoV-2 infection and sociodemographic factors. However, financial changes at both the national and global levels and these changes’ influences on people’s personal finances constitute another group of factors with the potential to cause symptoms of anxiety and depression. A correlation study of 1135 working adults in Poland was conducted to analyze the roles of a wide range of financial variables in explaining the extent of people’s PD during the pandemic. Three groups of financial factors predicted PD over and above sociodemographic variables and COVID-19 health-related factors: a person’s objective financial situation, their subjective financial situation, and their individual financial disposition, the last of these being the most important. The present study adds to the current state of knowledge by showing that financial variables explain a significant portion of variance in PD over and above sociodemographic and COVID-19 health-related factors. Moreover, the study also identified individual financial variables that were capable of predicting people’s psychological distress during the pandemic.

Smoking and obesity are important factors related to the etiology and clinical features of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The aim of this study was to carry out deeper analyses of the links between smoking status and body mass index as well as of the links between individual dimensions of health-related quality of life (QoL) and acceptance of life with disease in patients with COPD. Information about BMI, smoking status, clinical features of COPD, a COPD assessment test, and airflow obstruction indicators were obtained from 105 outpatients attending a pulmonary clinic. Analysis of covariance demonstrated that the subgroups of patients distinguished based on smoking status and BMI differed significantly in severity of Cough, Dyspnea, Limitation of daily activities, Lack of self-confidence, and Quality of sleep, independently of sociodemographic factors and clinical features of COPD. The results of our study suggest a certain path of the potential effects of obesity and smoking status on QoL. Risky health behaviors, such as smoking and at-risk body mass, only affect some aspects of health-related QoL.

Introduction: Cognitive impairment in chronic diseases such as psoriasis is an increasing clinical challenge. Objective: To assess the frequency and extent of difficulties in cognitive functioning in people with psoriasis compared to healthy people. Patients and methods: The systematic review was carried out on the 23rd July, 2021 by two trained psychologists resulting in a selection of 11 studies on 971 patients with psoriasis and 10,242 controls. Results: A review of the studies showed irregularities in many cognitive domains, including working memory processes, executive functions, long-term verbal memory, attention, and the visuospatial domain. Depending on the methods used to assess cognitive dysfunctions and the characteristics of patients in different studies, large differences in the frequency of cognitive impairment in patients with psoriasis were observed, ranging from 0 to 91.9%. Conclusions: The authors conclude that there is a need for longitudinal studies to identify factors important for the development and persistence of cognitive impairment in psoriatic patients.

Numerous data indicate the presence of cognitive impairment in people who have undergone COVID-19, often called COVID Fog (CF). This phenomenon persists even 6 months after infection, and its etiology and pathogenesis are not fully known. The aim of this article was to analyze the relationship among cognitive functioning, clinical data and nutrition indexes in patients discharged from the COVID-19 hospital of the Military Institute of Medicine, Warsaw, Poland. The sample comprised 17 individuals—10 women and 7 men, with ages of 65 ± 14 years. Cognitive impairment was measured with the use of the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA). The nutrition parameters included: hemoglobin, red blood cells, total cholesterol and its fractions, triglycerides, total protein, albumin, urea, creatinine, phosphates, calcium and sodium. The analysis showed that albumin concentration significantly correlated with the total MoCA score and especially with the short-term memory test score. Conversely, total cholesterol, and especially LDL concentrations, were highly and negatively associated with the MoCA score. In conclusion: markers of nutritional status are correlated with the severity of CF. Individuals with malnutrition or risk of malnutrition should be screened for CF. Further studies need to be performed in this area.