Older adults’ subjective experiences of the COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown in Italy: A qualitative study

Abstract

Objective

To evaluate the subjective experience of the COVID-19 outbreak in healthy older adults and develop a model of the older population’s psychological adaptation to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Methods

A qualitative grounded theory approach was taken to the study design and analysis, using semi-structured interviews to collect data from 19 community-active Italian older people by telephone during the first wave of COVID-19 (May 2020).

Results

The theory emerging from the study conceptualized the COVID-19 subjective experience in older people as an adjustment process to the disruption of habits, social contacts, and routines that prompted a meaning-making process to face this adverse experience. Three emergent categories included ‘loss, uncertainty, and distress’ as the psychological impact of the pandemic emergency, ‘making sense of COVID-19’ as a subjective sense-making process of the pandemic, and ‘living with the pandemic’ as agency and self-management within the pandemic experience. The resulting narratives encompassed themes, i.e. risk perception, representation of the self, connection with past-time memories, and compliance with safety measures.

Conclusion

The results have implications for designing effective messages to promote hope, social responsibility, and commitment in aging during the COVID-19 pandemic and for health workers who wish to support the psychological health of older adults.

Keywords:

• COVID-19
• older people
• subjective experience
• grounded theory
• meaning
• adjustment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.