Abstract
Older adults face the highest risk of COVID-19 morbidity and mortality. We investigated a one-year change in emotions and factors associated with emotional distress immediately after the onset of the pandemic, with emphasis on older age. Methods: The online Norwegian Citizen Panel includes participants drawn randomly from the Norwegian Population Registry. Emotional distress was defined as the sum score of negative (anxious, worried, sad or low, irritated, and lonely) minus positive emotions (engaged, calm and relaxed, happy). Results: Respondents to both surveys (n = 967) reported a one-year increase in emotional distress, mainly driven by elevated anxiety and worrying, but we found no difference in change by age. Multilevel mixed-effects linear regression comparing older age, economy-, and health-related factors showed that persons in their 60s (ß −1.87 (95%CI: −3.71, −0.04)) and 70s/80s (ß: −2.58 (−5.00, −0–17)) had decreased risk of emotional distress relative to persons under 60 years. Female gender (2.81 (1.34, 4.28)), expecting much lower income (5.09 (2.00, 8.17)), uncertainty whether infected with SARS-Cov2 (2.92 (1.21, 4.63)), and high self-rated risk of infection (1.77 (1.01, 2.53)) were associated with high levels of emotional distress. Conclusions: Knowledge of national determinants of distress is crucial to tailor accurate public health interventions in future outbreaks.
Highlights
Pandemic events represent global public health disasters, and their negative impact is exacerbated by detrimental effects on mental health [1,2]
We found no difference between the age groups in mean change of the single emotions, the sum of positive and/or negative emotions, and emotional distress when evaluated with linear regression
Female gender (ß: 2.61, p = 0.003) predicted an increase in emotional distress, while we found no effect of age groups and level of education
Summary
Pandemic events represent global public health disasters, and their negative impact is exacerbated by detrimental effects on mental health [1,2]. At these times, it is important to identify people who face the highest risk of psychiatric disorders [3,4] and challenges around successful management of stress in order to tailor accurate public and mental health interventions [5,6,7]. Emotional distress refers to the negative emotional state characterised by physical and/or emotional discomfort [8] and existing literature is equivocal on how older adults’ mental health is influenced by pandemics.
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