The immediate and longer-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health and wellbeing of older adults in England

Zaninotto, P.; Iob, E.; Demakakos, P.; Steptoe, A.

Objective To evaluate changes in mental health and wellbeing before and during the initial and later phases of the COVID-19 pandemic and investigate whether patterns varied with age, sex, and socioeconomic status. Design Prospective cohort study. Participants English Longitudinal Study of Ageing cohort of 5146 community dwelling adults aged 52 years and older (53% women, average age 66.74 years, standard deviation 10.62) who provided data before the pandemic (2018-19) and at two occasions in 2020 (June-July and November-December). Main outcome measure Depression, poor quality of life, loneliness and anxiety. Results: The prevalence of clinically significant depressive symptoms increased from 12.5% pre-pandemic to 22.6% in June-July 2020, with a further rise to 28.5% in November-December. This was accompanied by increased loneliness and deterioration in quality of life. The prevalence of anxiety rose from 9.4% to 10.9% between June-July and November-December 2022. Women and non-partnered people experienced worse changes in mental health and wellbeing. Participants with less wealth had lowest levels of mental health before and during the pandemic. Higher socioeconomic groups had better mental health overall, but responded to the pandemic with more negative changes. Patterns of changes were similar across age groups, the only exception was for depression which showed a smaller increase in the 75+ age group than in the youngest age group (50-59 years). Conclusions These data showed that mental health and wellbeing continued to worsen as lockdown continued, and that socioeconomic inequalities persisted. Women and non-partnered people experienced greater deterioration in all mental health outcomes. The immediate provision of diagnosis of mental health problems and targeted psychological interventions should target and support sociodemographic groups of older people at higher risk of psychological distress.