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Loneliness, Social Contact, and Health Among Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic is a challenging situation for many older adults at elevated risk for mortality. Social distancing and lockdown to prevent contagion may result in social isolation and feelings of loneliness, which can have adverse effects on health. We examined how depressive symptoms were ass...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Choun, Soyoung, Aldwin, Carolyn, Lee, Dylan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8681924/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igab046.502
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author Choun, Soyoung
Aldwin, Carolyn
Lee, Dylan
author_facet Choun, Soyoung
Aldwin, Carolyn
Lee, Dylan
author_sort Choun, Soyoung
collection PubMed
description The COVID-19 pandemic is a challenging situation for many older adults at elevated risk for mortality. Social distancing and lockdown to prevent contagion may result in social isolation and feelings of loneliness, which can have adverse effects on health. We examined how depressive symptoms were associated with between-person differences and within-person variations in loneliness, social contacts, and daily physical problems during 8 weeks. We sampled 247 older adults (Mage = 71.1, SD = 7.3, range = 51 - 95), who participated at micro-longitudinal online surveys (baseline and 7 weekly follow-ups) from April 28 to June 23. Multilevel modeling analysis controlling age, gender, marital status, and education showed that depressive symptoms were significantly decreased during 8 weeks. Further, depressive symptoms were positively coupled with both loneliness and physical problems for both the within-and between-person levels. Increase in social contact was related to decreases in depressive symptoms only at the between-person level.
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spelling pubmed-86819242021-12-17 Loneliness, Social Contact, and Health Among Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic Choun, Soyoung Aldwin, Carolyn Lee, Dylan Innov Aging Abstracts The COVID-19 pandemic is a challenging situation for many older adults at elevated risk for mortality. Social distancing and lockdown to prevent contagion may result in social isolation and feelings of loneliness, which can have adverse effects on health. We examined how depressive symptoms were associated with between-person differences and within-person variations in loneliness, social contacts, and daily physical problems during 8 weeks. We sampled 247 older adults (Mage = 71.1, SD = 7.3, range = 51 - 95), who participated at micro-longitudinal online surveys (baseline and 7 weekly follow-ups) from April 28 to June 23. Multilevel modeling analysis controlling age, gender, marital status, and education showed that depressive symptoms were significantly decreased during 8 weeks. Further, depressive symptoms were positively coupled with both loneliness and physical problems for both the within-and between-person levels. Increase in social contact was related to decreases in depressive symptoms only at the between-person level. Oxford University Press 2021-12-17 /pmc/articles/PMC8681924/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igab046.502 Text en © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Abstracts
Choun, Soyoung
Aldwin, Carolyn
Lee, Dylan
Loneliness, Social Contact, and Health Among Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic
title Loneliness, Social Contact, and Health Among Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_full Loneliness, Social Contact, and Health Among Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_fullStr Loneliness, Social Contact, and Health Among Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_full_unstemmed Loneliness, Social Contact, and Health Among Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_short Loneliness, Social Contact, and Health Among Older Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_sort loneliness, social contact, and health among older adults during the covid-19 pandemic
topic Abstracts
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8681924/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igab046.502
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