O uso do método de Rorschach para avaliação dos impactos psicológicos da Pandemia de COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic caused millions of deaths, in addition to having generated a crisis in the health systems of several regions and aggravated economic and psychosocial problems. Research was conducted to understand how individual differences influenced individuals' perception of their effects. Nevertheless, it was observed that most of the instruments used were self-reported and few studies were conducted to verify whether there were changes directly in personality characteristics in this context. The use of different evaluation and research methods is advocated, so for the present thesis, the choice of the Rorschach method was made, a scientifically recognized projective method that brings rich data on the psychic functioning of individuals. In view of this, this thesis aimed to understand the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on personality characteristics from the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (R-PAS). Specifically, to verify whether there was a change in the ability to cope with situations and emotional processes due to the COVID-19 pandemic; to analyze whether there were changes in symptoms of anxiety, depression, and reactions to trauma due to the COVID-19 pandemic; and to evaluate whether there was variation in the feeling of stress and distress due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Exploratory quantitative research was conducted, in which we compared one group of adults and another of children who responded to R-PAS before the COVID-19 pandemic with two other groups that responded to the same method during the pandemic. Data collection procedures followed all the standards of the Research Ethics Committee. In the analyses, the statistical power was calculated, and the databases of adults and children were constructed from the Propensity Score Matching. Next, descriptive statistics were conducted to characterize the sample and the chi-square tests, Fisher, and Kruskall-Wallis to verify the proportion of sociodemographic characteristics in the groups. Additionally, intergroup comparison analyses were performed in relation to the variables of the Domains Engagement and Cognitive Processing and Stress and Distress. Most variables did not have significant differences, and the magnitude of effect was derisory or small. Finally, to meet the proposed objectives, the R-PAS variables of the two domains were compared. It was found that F%, MC, MC-PPD, M and CFC had significant differences or large or medium effect sizes with higher averages in the group during the pandemic, this data may have occurred due to the need for people to adapt to the pandemic period. In children, lower means were observed in the group that responded during the COVID-19 pandemic period in Complexity, Sy, MC and CFC, indicating that there was less capacity to cope with situations. For the Stress and Distress Domain, in adults there were no significant differences between the groups and the effects were derisory or small. In children, most of the differences between the groups had a medium effect, but it was the pre-pandemic group that had the highest averages. Thus, in short, this thesis obtained exploratory information on the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on personality characteristics.