Associations Between Fear of COVID-19, Affective Symptoms and Risk Perception Among Community-Dwelling Older Adults During a COVID-19 Lockdown.

Madeline F Y Han,Junhong Yu,Rathi Mahendran

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.638831

Madeline F Y Han, Junhong Yu + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.638831

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Abstract

Fear is a common and potentially distressful psychological response to the current COVID-19 pandemic. The factors associated with such fear remains relatively unstudied among older adults. We investigated if fear of COVID-19 could be associated with a combination of psychological factors such as anxiety and depressive symptoms, and risk perception of COVID-19, and demographic factors in a community sample of older adults. Older adults (N = 413, Mage = 69.09 years, SD = 5.45) completed measures of fear of COVID-19, anxiety and depressive symptoms, and risk perception of COVID-19, during a COVID-19 lockdown. These variables, together with demographics, were fitted to a structural equation model. Anxiety and depressive symptoms were highly correlated with each other and were combined into the higher order latent variable of affective symptoms for analyses. The final model revealed that fear of COVID-19 was positively associated with psychological factors of affective symptoms and risk perception. Older age was associated with greater fear of COVID-19. Our findings showed that fear of COVID-19 can be a projection of pre-existing affective symptoms and inflated risk perceptions and highlighted the need to address the incorrect risk perceptions of COVID-19 and socio-affective issues among older adults in the community.

Highlights

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was first discovered in Wuhan, China in December 2019, and has since been declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020 (World Health Organization, 2020b)
Our results indicated that affective symptoms, risk perception, and old age were associated with heightened fear of COVID-19
Our findings revealed a strong interrelation between fear of COVID-19 and affective symptoms, suggesting the significant effect COVID-19 has on psychological well-being and mental health

Summary

Introduction

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was first discovered in Wuhan, China in December 2019, and has since been declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020 (World Health Organization, 2020b). In response to the health crisis, countries worldwide have implemented a series of public health and social distancing measures to curb the spread of COVID-19. Associations Between Fear of COVID-19 grew, the government raised its Disease Outbreak Response System Condition level from yellow to orange on February 7, which signaled to the public that COVID-19 is severe and spreads with moderate disruptions to daily life (Khalik, 2020). Wearing of masks was mandatory and gathering in groups was banned. During this period, confirmed cases of COVID-19 in local communities still continued to rise substantially, and new clusters started to form and spread rapidly among foreign workers’ dormitories. On April 20, Singapore reached its peak of 1,426 new COVID-19 cases, with the majority of them coming from dormitories (Baker, 2020)

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