Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Jan;29(1):27-34.
doi: 10.1016/j.jagp.2020.10.009. Epub 2020 Oct 22.

The Psychological Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic and Lockdown on Caregivers of People With Dementia

Manuela Altieri  1 , Gabriella Santangelo  2
Affiliations

The Psychological Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic and Lockdown on Caregivers of People With Dementia

Manuela Altieri et al. Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2021 Jan.

Abstract

Background: Caregivers of people with dementia (pwD) are at risk of depression, anxiety, and burden. COVID-19 pandemic and government-imposed lockdown as a preventive measure might increase psychological symptoms in caregivers. The authors performed a study to measure the change of psychological symptoms during quarantine or self-isolation for COVID-19 in a sample of Italian caregivers of pwD, and to investigate if the resilience is associated with psychological changes in the sample.

Methods: Eighty-four caregivers of pwD completed an online survey including questionnaires assessing depressive symptomatology and anxiety before and during the lockdown, caregiver burden and levels of resilience.

Results: The multivariate analysis of variance revealed an effect of time (before and during the lockdown) in the whole group on depression scores; a significant interaction between time and resilience was found on anxiety scores, revealing that caregivers with high resilience showed a more significant increase of anxiety levels during lockdown than caregivers with low resilience. Moreover, the regression analysis revealed that caregiver burden was associated negatively with resilience scores, and positively with higher functional dependence.

Conclusion: COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown produced psychological consequences in caregivers of pwD, with an increase of levels of depression. Moreover, high resilience had a negative effect on anxiety levels and no effect on depressive symptomatology during the lockdown; moreover, it was associated with lower levels of caregiver burden. All caregivers, even those with high resilience levels, should be addressed to psychological interventions to reduce levels of depression, anxiety and caregiver burden.

Keywords: COVID-19; Caregiver; anxiety; burden; dementia; depression; resilience.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Plot describing the interaction effect of resilience levels (high and low resilience) and time (before and during the lockdown) on depression subscale of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS-D) scores in a sample of caregivers.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Plot describing the interaction effect of resilience levels (high and low resilience) and time (before and during the lockdown) on anxiety subscale of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS-A) scores in a sample of caregivers.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. World Health Organization. Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Pandemic. Available at:https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019. Accessed September 11, 2020.
    1. Bonanad C, García-Blas S, Tarazona-Santabalbina FJ. Coronavirus: the geriatric emergency of 2020. Joint document of the Section on Geriatric Cardiology of the Spanish Society of Cardiology and the Spanish Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology. Rev Esp Cardiol (Engl Ed) 2020;73:569–576. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Brown EE, Kumar S, Rajji TK. Anticipating and mitigating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. Am J Geriatr Psychiatry. 2020;28:712–721. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Pinquart M, Sörensen S. Differences between caregivers and noncaregivers in psychological health and physical health: a meta-analysis. Psychol Aging. 2003;18:250–267. - PubMed
    1. Sallim AB, Sayampanathan AA, Cuttilan A. Prevalence of mental health disorders among caregivers of patients with Alzheimer disease. J Am Med Dir Assoc. 2015;16:1034–1041. - PubMed