Abstract
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has exposed older adults to health and social risks. This study examined the perceptions of community-dwelling older adults regarding how COVID-19 restricted their daily lives. Six focus-group interviews were conducted with 24 participants (mean age, 78.2 ± 5.5 years) living in urban and rural areas in Japan. Then, a qualitative inductive content analysis was performed. Six themes were generated: “fear of infection and public, watchful eyes,” “consistency in daily personal life,” “pain from reducing my social life,” “readiness to endure a restricted life,” “awareness of positive changes in myself,” and “concern for a languishing society.” There was no change that would make their lives untenable, and they continued their daily personal lives at a minimum level. However, their social lives were reduced, which over the long term can lead to a lost sense of purpose in life. This was reported as an adverse factor in the development of other diseases and functional decline in previous studies. While there is no doubt that infection prevention is important, supporting older adults in engaging in activities that provide a sense of purpose in life could contribute to their present and future overall health including mental health.
Highlights
People of all ages are at risk of contracting coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), previous studies showed that people older than 60 years are more likely to catch the disease [1], experience more severe symptoms [2,3], and have higher mortality rates [3,4,5]
We focused on people who are of older age (≥65 years of age) living in urban and rural areas in northern Japan whose daily lives were under conditions where measures including social distancing were requested by the government
Focus-group interviews were conducted with 23 older adults living in urban and rural areas of northern Japan to explore their perceptions on how COVID-190 s spread restricted their daily lives
Summary
People of all ages are at risk of contracting coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), previous studies showed that people older than 60 years are more likely to catch the disease [1], experience more severe symptoms [2,3], and have higher mortality rates [3,4,5]. Many experts have observed that as social distancing measures are implemented globally, social isolation and loneliness may increase among older adults [7,8,9,10,11]. Investigated the public perception and experience of social exclusion and isolation associated with the COVID-19 pandemic during the early stages of the United Kingdom’s lockdown.
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