Research by scholars at the School of Communication shows a link between COVID anxiety and avoidance with stress, loneliness, and depression.
Colin Hesse
By Colin Bowyer, Communications Manager - September 10, 2025
The ability to express and receive messages of affection is paramount for the health and wellness of both individuals and their relationships. Previous studies have found that the social isolation caused by the quarantine restrictions during the COVID-19 Pandemic, especially in 2020 and 2021, significantly disrupted people’s abilities to share adequate affection. Thus, creating a deficit in affectionate interaction that was associated with loneliness, depression, anxiety, and stress. Few studies, though, have examined whether current levels of anxiety related to COVID would continue to relate to that deficit in affection.
In a new study published in Communication Quarterly, Colin Hesse, director of the School of Communication, and Salvatore Petruzzella, communication master’s student, as well as Kory Floyd, professor of communication at Washington State University, find a direct correlation between COVID anxiety, avoidance behaviors, and mental health, whereby higher levels of loneliness, stress, and depressions were recorded in individuals with prolonged anxiety around COVID.
From the pandemic’s onset starting in March 2020 in the U.S. to the present day, individuals reported experiencing large amounts of health-related anxiety. Originally coupled with new policies regarding protective masks and social distancing to mitigate the impact of the virus, individuals began to have fewer interactions with people outside the household and decreased their amount of engagement with friends face-to-face. This was more apparent for individuals with higher levels of COVID anxiety, who continue to distance more than others and for longer periods of time.
Unsurprisingly, individuals continue to experience benefits and drawbacks to the behavioral changes. For benefits, social distancing lower exposure to the coronavirus. For drawbacks, there has been a relational increase in loneliness, addiction, and depression.
“It’s not fundamentally wrong to have anxiety or fears about morbidity and mortality surrounding the pandemic,” explained Hesse. “As a social species, being around other people and expressing affection is important to our mental wellness. It’s clear that the quarantine restrictions put in place cause more separation, which hurt people’s overall mental health.”
Surveying over 300 people IN 2024, Hesse, Petruzzella, and Floyd measured participants’ COVID anxiety, avoidance behavior, and mental health indicators. The results supported the authors’ original hypotheses: (1) those with higher COVID anxiety distanced themselves more from other people, (2) this avoidance caused individuals to receive less affection, and (3) the lack of affection was related to higher rates of stress, loneliness, and depression.
The wider implications suggest that COVID anxiety can continue to impact a host of behaviors, including fewer social activities, but affectionate communication may buffer the negative health consequences from that COVID-19 anxiety. Understanding the connections between social distancing and mental wellness might help recommendations for public health behaviors during a subsequent pandemic.
“There are innumerable studies about the effects of COVID during and shortly after the height of the pandemic,” said Hesse. “We wanted to look at the continuing effects of the pandemic and show how close interpersonal communication is important to all of us. Studying how COVID anxiety still affects individuals in a post-pandemic world and its direct link to mental wellness is still important to take into account.”