A national survey on COVID-19 second-wave lockdowns on older adults' mental wellbeing, health-seeking behaviours and social outcomes across Australia

Joyce Siette, Karla Seaman, Laura Dodds, Kristiana Ludlow, Carly Johnco, Viviana Wuthrich, Joanne K. Earl, Piers Dawes, Paul Strutt, Johanna I. Westbrook

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25 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Background: The impact of severe second lockdown measures on older adults' wellbeing is unknown. We aimed to (i) identify the impact of the second lockdown that resulted from the second wave of COVID-19 cases on older Australians' quality of life; (ii) compare the impact of second wave lockdowns in Victoria, Australia's second most populous State, to those in other States and Territories not in lockdown. Methods: A national cross-sectional study of community-dwelling older adults completed online questionnaires for quality of life, social networks, healthcare access, and perceived impact of COVID-19 between July to September 2020. Tobit regression was used to measure the relationships of healthcare service access and social networks with quality of life of older adults in Victoria compared to those in the rest of Australia. Results: A total of 2,990 respondents (mean [SD] age, 67.3 [7.0]; 66.8% female) participated. At time of data collection, Victoria's second COVID-19 lockdown had been in force for an average 51.7 days. Median quality of life scores were significantly higher in Victoria compared to the rest of Australia (t(2,827)=2.25 p=0.025). Being female (95% CI, -0.051-0.020), having lower educational attainment (95% CI, -0.089--0.018), receiving government benefits (95% CI, -0.054--0.024), having small social networks (95% CI, 0.006-0.009) and self-reported physical chronic health conditions were all independent predictors of lower quality of life. Conclusions: Longer-term studies are required to provide more robust evidence of the impact as restrictions lift and normal social conventions return.
Original languageEnglish
Article number400
Number of pages16
JournalBMC Geriatrics
Volume21
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021

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© The Author(s). 2021 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

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