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 May;33(5):505-514.
doi: 10.1017/S1041610220004135. Epub 2020 Dec 17.

Loneliness, physical activity, and mental health during COVID-19: a longitudinal analysis of depression and anxiety in adults over the age of 50 between 2015 and 2020

Byron Creese  1 , Zunera Khan  2 , William Henley  1 , Siobhan O'Dwyer  1 , Anne Corbett  1 , Miguel Vasconcelos Da Silva  2 , Kathryn Mills  1 , Natalie Wright  3 , Ingelin Testad  4 , Dag Aarsland  2 , Clive Ballard  1
Affiliations

Loneliness, physical activity, and mental health during COVID-19: a longitudinal analysis of depression and anxiety in adults over the age of 50 between 2015 and 2020

Byron Creese et al. Int Psychogeriatr. 2021 May.

Abstract

Objective: Loneliness and physical activity are important targets for research into the impact of COVID-19 because they have established links with mental health, could be exacerbated by social distancing policies, and are potentially modifiable. In this study, we aimed to identify whether loneliness and physical activity were associated with worse mental health during a period of mandatory social distancing in the UK.

Design: Population-based observational cohort study.

Setting: Mental health data collected online during COVID-19 from an existing sample of adults aged 50 and over taking part in a longitudinal study of aging. All had comparable annual data collected between 2015 and 2019.

Participants: Three-thousand two-hundred and eighty-one participants aged 50 and over.

Measurements: Trajectories of depression (measured by PHQ-9) and anxiety (measured by GAD-7) between 2015 and 2020 were analyzed with respect to loneliness, physical activity levels, and a number of socioeconomic and demographic characteristics using zero-inflated negative binomial regression.

Results: In 2020, PHQ-9 score for loneliness, adjusted for covariates, was 3.23 (95% CI: 3.01-3.44), an increase of around 1 point on all previous years in this group and 2 points higher than people not rated lonely, whose score did not change in 2020 (1.22, 95% CI: 1.12-1.32). PHQ-9 was 2.60 (95% CI: 2.43-2.78) in people with decreased physical activity, an increase of .5 on previous years. In contrast, PHQ-9 in 2020 for people whose physical activity had not decreased was 1.66, 95% CI: 1.56-1.75, similar to previous years. A similar relationship was observed for GAD-7 though the absolute burden of symptoms lower.

Conclusion: After accounting for pre-COVID-19 trends, we show that experiencing loneliness and decreased physical activity are risk factors for worsening mental health during the pandemic. Our findings highlight the need to examine policies which target these potentially modifiable risk factors.

Keywords: COVID-19; anxiety; depression; exercise; loneliness; mental health; pandemic; physical activity.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Consort chart.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Trajectories of predicted PHQ-9 scores from zero-inflated negative binomial regression models for loneliness and physical activity. Error bars are 95% confidence intervals.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Trajectories of predicted GAD-7 scores from zero-inflated negative binomial regression models for loneliness and physical activity. Error bars are 95% confidence intervals.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

References

    1. Age UK. (no date). Loneliness and Isolation Evidence Review.
    1. Armitage, R. and Nellums, L. B. (2020). COVID-19 and the consequences of isolating the elderly. The Lancet Public Health, 5(5), e256. 10.1016/S2468-2667(20)30061-X - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Banks, J. and Xu, X. (2020). The mental health effects of the first two months of lockdown and social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK. IFS Working Paper W20/16.
    1. Choi, K. W. et al. (2019). Assessment of bidirectional relationships between physical activity and depression among adults: a 2-sample mendelian randomization study. JAMA Psychiatry, 76(4), 399–408. 10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2018.4175 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. COVID-19 Psychological Research Consortium (C19PRC). (2020). Initial Research Findings on COVID-19 and Mental Health in the UK. University of Sheffield and University of Ulster.

Publication types