Are older adults also at higher psychological risk from COVID-19?
Aging Ment Health
; 25(7): 1297-1304, 2021 07.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-32870024
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE:
Given the lack of information on the psychological impact of COVID-19 on people aged ≥60, we aimed to describe their psychological responses to this pandemic and lockdown situation and compare them with those under 60 years of age.METHODS:
Secondary analysis of a larger online cross-sectional study designed to determine the psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown across Spain. We analyzed a total of 1690 respondents aged ≥60 years and compared them with 13,363 respondents under 60 years of age. We employed the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale and the Impact of Event Scale to evaluate psychological responses.RESULTS:
In all, 52.6% of women and 34.3% of men were found to be probable cases of any emotional distress (p < 0.001). In both sexes, the most common psychological response was avoidance behavior (34.7% and 23.8%, respectively), followed by depression (28.5 and 14.2%). Older women and men were considered probable cases of any emotional distress less often than younger ones (women 52.6% vs. 72.3%, p < 0.001; men 34.3% vs. 50.6%, p < 0.001). Finally, the results of the binary logistic regression showed that only depressive and stress responses are psychological factors associated with age group [age ≥ 60 years, O.R. = 0.617 (95% CI = 0.501 - 0.759) and 0.437 (95% CI = 0.334 - 0.573), respectively].CONCLUSION:
Contrary to our hypothesis and despite the high percentage of emotional distress we found in older adults, especially women, they are actually at lower risk of developing depressive and stress consequences from COVID-19 and lockdown than those under 60 years of age. That said, we believe our results highlight the need for expert guidance in this age group, especially older women living alone.Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Pandemics
/
COVID-19
Type of study:
Etiology_studies
/
Observational_studies
/
Prevalence_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Limits:
Aged
/
Female
/
Humans
/
Male
Country/Region as subject:
Europa
Language:
En
Journal:
Aging Ment Health
Journal subject:
GERIATRIA
/
PSICOLOGIA
Year:
2021
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
España