COVID-19 worries and mental health: the moderating effect of age

Abstract

Background

Older age (60+ years) increases the risk of contracting and dying from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which might suggest worse mental health for those in this age range during the pandemic. Indeed, greater worry about COVID-19 is associated with poorer mental health. However, older age is generally associated with better emotional well-being, despite increased likelihood of negative events (e.g. death of a spouse) with age. This study examined whether age moderated the relation between COVID-19 worries and mental health.

Methods

A national sample of U.S. adults (N = 848; aged 18–85 years) completed an online survey from March 30 to April 5, 2020. The survey assessed anxiety, depression, general concern about COVID-19, perceived likelihood of contracting COVID-19, social distancing, self-quarantining, current mood, health, and demographics.

Results

Older age was associated with better mental health (i.e. lower levels of anxiety and depression). Greater perceived likelihood of contracting COVID-19 was related to higher anxiety. However, this effect was moderated by age. At younger ages (18–49 years), the positive association between perceived likelihood of contracting COVID-19 and anxiety was significant, but the association was not significant at older ages (50+ years).

Conclusion

Older age may buffer against the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mental health. More research is necessary to understand the potential protective nature of age during the pandemic, as well as the recovery period.

Keywords:

• Anxiety
• depression
• COVID-19
• well-being paradox

Disclosure statement

The authors report no conflict of interest.

Notes

1 There was 4.4–5.7% missing data for key study variables. Participants with missing data were excluded from analyses using listwise deletion. When expectation-maximization was used to impute missing data, the patterns of findings remained the same.

2 COVID-19 status was determined based on responses to the current survey and all previous waves of the longitudinal study.

3 When perceived likelihood of contracting COVID-19 was removed from the model, greater concern about COVID-19 was significantly associated with greater anxiety (β = .05, p = .04). The interaction between age and concern about COVID-19 was not significant (p = .10).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a RAPID grant from the National Science Foundation under Award ID BCS-2027027. The funding organization was not involved in designing the study, collecting and analyzing the data, or preparing the manuscript.