The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on wellbeing and cognitive functioning of older adults

  1. Sarah De Pue
  2. Céline Gillebert
  3. Eva Dierckx
  4. Marie-Anne Vanderhasselt
  5. Rudi De Raedt
  6. Eva Van den Bussche

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Abstract

COVID-19 took a heavy toll on older adults. In Belgium, by the end of August, 93% of deaths due to COVID-19 were aged 65 or older. Similar trends were observed in other countries. As a consequence, older adults were identified as a group at risk, and strict governmental restrictions were imposed on them. This has caused concerns about their mental health. Using an online survey, this study established the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on adults aged 65 years or older, and which factors moderate this impact. Participants reported a significant decrease in activity level, sleep quality and wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Depression was strongly related to reported declines in activity level, sleep quality, wellbeing and cognitive functioning. Our study shows that the COVID-19 pandemic had a severe impact on the mental health of older adults. This implies that this group at risk requires attention of governments and healthcare.

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  1. Version published to 10.1038/s41598-021-84127-7
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.27.20183129: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: All participants provided written informed consent.
    IRB: This study was approved by the Social and Societal Ethics Committee (SMEC) from KU Leuven (G-2020-1987).
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Some limitations of this study need to be addressed. First of all, the sample of older adults in this study is rather homogenous in some respects. Participants were all Dutch-speaking older adults living in Flanders. Moreover, most were in good health and their socioeconomic status was high, as indexed by educational level and income. Therefore, the results of this study might be difficult to generalise to the whole population of older adults and additional studies in different countries, and more heterogeneous samples of older adults are needed. Moreover, since this study was administered online, a part of this older adult population could probably not be reached. Third, the design of this study was cross-sectional and administered during the COVID-19 period. Questions regarding the period before COVID-19 were therefore necessarily retrospective, which might lead to biased self-reports (Sato & Kawahara, 2011). In addition, this study relied on subjective self-report which can differ from objective states (e.g. Burmester, Leathem, & Merrick, 2016). For example, it has already been shown that cognitive ability tends to be overestimated with increasing age (van der Ham, van der Kuil, & Claessen, 2019). During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, experimental studies administered to a sample of older adults repeatedly over time (e.g., when the pandemic activity decreases or flares up again in new waves) could shed more light on the actual effect of the COVID-19 period on cognitive fun...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.08.27.20183129v1 on medRxiv