The article is devoted to the study of the concept of the pandemic and coping behaviour. Two groups of participants are the following - the recovered respondents (n=57) and those who have not had a new coronavirus infection (n=57). The concept of the pandemic in psychological interpretation is a mental model that reflects objectified and subjective-evaluative characteristics and affects the choice of copings in a specific difficult situation. Based on the expert work, the relevant objectified and subjective-evaluative characteristics of the pandemic concept were identified. The conceptualisation of the pandemic is diagnosed using a directed associative experiment (the stimulus included the word “pandemic”), the pictographic technique and the “Ways of Coping Questionnare” by Richard S. Lazarus and Susan Kleppner Folkman. It was revealed that youth understood the pandemic as a global restriction caused by a viral disease, accompanied by negative emotions and coping by individual means of protection/distancing. The recovered participants considered the pandemic as a long viral disease a person suffers in isolation accompanied by fear, horror, loneliness, fatigue. Women who had been ill conceptualised the pandemic in emotionally-coloured characteristics and more often searched the social support than men (p=0.036). Men interpreted the pandemic as a widespread treasonous disease. The resource of the individual protective equipment, positive rethinking and social support in overcoming a specific difficult situation (the COVID-19 pandemic) is shown.