Anxiety, worry and perceived stress in the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic, March 2020. Preliminary results.

Rosario Sinta Gamonal Limcaoco; Enrique Montero Mateos; Juan Matias Fernandez; Carlos Roncero

It could seem contradictory to find that older respondents showed lower levels of anxiety and worry even though this age group is reported as a high risk group. Pneumonia causes a more severe condition and even higher mortality among the elderly, as studied in Yang et al. We find a negative correlation between age and the score given on the scale. A statistically significant difference is observed between the median score between those over 60 years of age and those under that age. Remor E 2006, also shows that the stress scores had a tendency to decrease with age using the PSS, suggesting that perceptions of stress tend to decline as age increases, that result must be interpreted with care, as the correlation was very low. In this study, the findings are similar, older people present lower anxiety levels, even though they are the population with higher risk of presenting worse progress in this disease. Carstensen et al. 2006 , offered reasons for this decline of stress with age, from the selectivity of positive aspects to reduced physical reactivity due to physical and health limitations. Frazier et al. 2019, emphasises three key components to explain the changes in integration for social decisions in ageing: theory of mind, emotion regulation, and memory for past experience.