Mental Health Issues Associated With COVID-19 Among the Elderly Population: A Narrative Review

Since its discovery in December 2019, coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been affecting humanity in economic, social, physical, and psychological manner. During COVID-19, the older population needs special consideration since they have a greater risk of developing serious illnesses. We used a narrative review approach to identify the relevant articles. PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases were searched for the following keywords: (mental health OR mental illness(es) OR anxiety OR depression OR irritability) AND (elderly OR older people OR aged 60 years or more) AND (Covid-19 OR pandemic OR chronic diseases) AND (mitigate OR manage). In the initial search, we found 948 articles related to our search string, and only 33 studies were included in this narrative review. The results demonstrated that the elderly population is more prone to mental health issues associated with COVID-19. This narrative review also reported that loneliness, stress, depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, and suicidal ideation symptoms are experienced by the elderly during the pandemic. Our results also demonstrate that interventions, such as community activities through social interactions, and the use of digital technologies could improve the quality of life of older people and help in the mitigation and management of the adverse effects of COVID-19.