TY - JOUR
T1 - Mental health and well-being of older carers during the COVID-19 pandemic ENGLAND
T2 - Evidence from England
AU - Gessa, Giorgio Di
AU - Price, Debora
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Older people caring at home or in the community play a vital role in supporting population health and wellbeing and in protecting health and care systems, often at cost to their own health. Yet there has been very little research or policy attention given to this group of carers during the pandemic. Exploiting longitudinal data from Wave 9 (2018/19) and the first two COVID-19 sub-studies (June/July 2020; November/December 2020) of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, we use logistic and linear regression models to investigate associations between changes in provision of informal care and mental health during the pandemic, controlling for socio-demographic characteristics, pre-pandemic physical and mental health, and social isolation measures. During the first months of the pandemic, about a quarter of older people provided informal care (with ~10% caring for members living in the same household). Those caring in the household experience worse mental health during the pandemic. Even controlling for prior characteristics and lack of social interactions, those caring for family members in the household had higher odds of reporting elevated depressive symptoms (OR=1.67, 95%CI=1.07;2.62), poor self-rated health (OR=1.73, 95%CI=1.09;2.73), anxiety (OR=2.21, 95%CI=1.20;4.06) as well as lower quality of life (B=-0.85, 95%CI=-1.66;-0.05) and life satisfaction (B=-0.43; 95%CI=-0.78;-0.09) than those who were caring for friends and family outside the household. As we aim to build back society and restore the wellbeing of our populations, policies and services should be better directed to support those people who during the pandemic struggled to cope while caring for their family members.
AB - Older people caring at home or in the community play a vital role in supporting population health and wellbeing and in protecting health and care systems, often at cost to their own health. Yet there has been very little research or policy attention given to this group of carers during the pandemic. Exploiting longitudinal data from Wave 9 (2018/19) and the first two COVID-19 sub-studies (June/July 2020; November/December 2020) of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, we use logistic and linear regression models to investigate associations between changes in provision of informal care and mental health during the pandemic, controlling for socio-demographic characteristics, pre-pandemic physical and mental health, and social isolation measures. During the first months of the pandemic, about a quarter of older people provided informal care (with ~10% caring for members living in the same household). Those caring in the household experience worse mental health during the pandemic. Even controlling for prior characteristics and lack of social interactions, those caring for family members in the household had higher odds of reporting elevated depressive symptoms (OR=1.67, 95%CI=1.07;2.62), poor self-rated health (OR=1.73, 95%CI=1.09;2.73), anxiety (OR=2.21, 95%CI=1.20;4.06) as well as lower quality of life (B=-0.85, 95%CI=-1.66;-0.05) and life satisfaction (B=-0.43; 95%CI=-0.78;-0.09) than those who were caring for friends and family outside the household. As we aim to build back society and restore the wellbeing of our populations, policies and services should be better directed to support those people who during the pandemic struggled to cope while caring for their family members.
UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/20cff444-abb7-3fe6-ac55-91f52163d0f5/
U2 - 10.1093/geroni/igac059.2104
DO - 10.1093/geroni/igac059.2104
M3 - Article
SN - 2399-5300
SP - 556
EP - 557
JO - Innovation in Aging
JF - Innovation in Aging
ER -