Does dispositional envy predict depression severity in Ukrainian adults living in wartime?

OBJECTIVE

Russia's war against Ukraine, which escalated in 2022, with related losses, injuries, and forced displacements, resulted in numerous mental health issues in Ukrainians, including a rise in the prevalence of depression. Researchers report various psychosocial factors that predict, mediate, or moderate depressive symptoms in Ukrainian adults facing war. However, among psychological factors, they focus mostly on resilience or wellbeing levels. In contrast, personality traits, including dispositional envy, were not explored enough.

METHODS

This study was organized as an online survey, which included a questionnaire on sociodemographic data, Dispositional Benign and Malicious Envy Scale (BeMaS), and PHQ-9 for depression assessment. 3,026 Ukrainian adults (52.2% males; 76.5% married) aged from 18 to 74 (M = 42.4, SD = 9.72) filled in the survey in January-March 2025. The TRIPOD checklist for prediction model development and validation was utilized for the transparency of this report.

RESULTS

Although dispositional malicious envy weakly correlated with depressive symptoms (r = 0.039, p < 0.05), both dispositional envy types did not succeed in explaining depression levels more than 0.2% of its variance. Female gender, younger age, and higher educational degrees, along with malicious envy, contributed to depression altogether, explaining only 4.6% of its variance. Interestingly, both dispositions of envy correlated with each other (r = 0.381, p < 0.001).

CONCLUSION

Dispositional envy type does not predict depression levels in Ukrainian adults during wartime. Generally, the role of envy in the development of depressive symptoms in crisis circumstances may be overrated.