COVID-19 puts adults at higher risk for anxiety
Seniors living in isolation feeling the effects of depression
days it’s hard to tell who is suffering more from the isolation brought by the COVID-19 pandemic — a 98-year-old World War II veteran who hasn’t been allowed visitors at his Winter Park nursing home for nearly five months, or his 64-year-old daughter waiting in agony as she watches his emotional health deteriorate from afar.
“This isolation has taken its toll on him,” said Linda Warren, who has tried to keep in touch with her father, a retired engineer, by “visiting” from outside a window or reading to him via Amazon’s Alexa. “I can see more and more confusion and depression setting in. … As he says, there are worse things than dying — like sitting [there] day after day, week after week, and month after month alone.”
While many younger people have been able to restart at least some of their work and social lives, older Americans are more likely to be frozen in a surreal and lonely existence that has put them at greater risk for anxiety and depression.
And it’s not just the people living in nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
“What we’re hearing from older adults is that, because of the virus, they can’t do so many things that used to bring them joy,” said Karla Radka, CEO of the Senior Resource Alliance, which serves residents 60 and older in Orange, Seminole, Osceola and Brevard counties. “They can’t go to congregate meal sites or dances at senior centers. They can’t volunteer. And many of them had part-time jobs that supplemented their Social Security checks.”
Those positions have either disappeared in the pandemic’s economic recession, or older workers have quit out of the fear of expoSome
sure to the virus, Radka said.
The alliance recently began offering free mental health services for anyone 60 and over in its fourcounty territory who is struggling with symptoms of depression and anxiety. The Florida Department of Elder Affairs is funding the counseling sessions during the pandemic (email pearls@sraflorida.org or call 407-514-1803 for more information). The local agency also has ongoing efforts to support emotional well-being, including its telephone reassurance program to provide regular check-ins with those who live alone.
Too often, mental health professionals said, older adults are reluctant to ask for assistance, even during the pandemic.
Symptoms of depression are often dismissed as a normal reaction to getting older. But signs of trouble — loss of appetite, over-eating, insomnia or spending long hours in bed, abusing prescription drugs and alcohol — should trigger a call for help.
“Even in the best of times, many seniors are dealing with social isolation,” said Judith Cook, a professor of psychiatry and director for the Center on Mental Health Services Research and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “Now with the [social distancing], sheltering in place and just not being in contact with other people, that enhances their sense of loneliness and feeling cut off from others.”
Because the virus tends to be more deadly to those 65 and up — a demographic that accounts for 80 percent of all coronavirus deaths in the U.S. — even family members may keep their distance from elderly relatives in order to protect them.
“People who are older and don’t feel they have as much time left might view these months as being stolen from them,” Cook said. “They can’t go to their grandson’s graduation, or they couldn’t come to their granddaughter’s baptism, and maybe there aren’t a whole lot more of those opportunities down the road.”
Traditionally, older Americans have been less likely to report feelings of depression and anxiety than their younger counterparts — in part, mental health experts say, because their generation, and particularly men, tend to mistake such struggles for personal weakness. Yet suicide rates are particularly high among older men, with men age 85 and older having the highest rate of any group in the country.
Part of the problem may be the messages they get about their own worth in our culture.
“These are the keepers of wisdom, the owners of our history,” said Eugenia Agard, a licensed mental health counselor whose statewide practice is based in Kissimmee. “But the message when this pandemic started was repeatedly, ‘Oh, it’s just the elderly who are at risk. Don’t worry; most of us are going to be OK,’ as if the elderly were expendable. It was very disturbing.”
Agard is particularly alarmed about the impact — both physical and mental — on older Americans of color, who have been disproportionately sickened and killed by the virus.
“The health disparities for people of color don’t go away as people age,” she said. And those physical health problems can make it more likely that people become isolated — shut away in their own homes or in long-term care facilities. “So often we don’t even see that our elderly population is suffering.”
Just the comfort of a friendly touch by a loved one can have a measurable impact on both physical and mental health, releasing oxytocin — the so-called “cuddle hormone” that promotes feelings of devotion, trust and bonding. The chemical is credited with lowering blood pressure.
It is something that can’t be replicated by a Zoom chat.
Still, Agard encourages older clients to keep connected through whatever means they can, even if it’s only a phone call. And she said younger family members need to reach out to their elders, even if they don’t want to risk an in-person visit.
Linda Warren is trying to do her part, despite being barred from her father’s nursing home since midMarch.
“I really want to see my dad, but he to see me to be sure of at least one thing in his life,” said Warren, who is hoping Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will soon find a way to allow limited in-person visitation at longterm care facilities.
One afternoon last week, the staff called her to say her father was distraught.
“He was crying inconsolably,” she said. “He had a bad dream that I left him and thought it was real… He often says I am the only thing he has left.”