Distress Signals: Age Differences in Psychological Distress before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Psychological distress reached historically high levels in 2020, but why, and why were there pronounced age differences? We address these questions using a relatively novel, multipronged approach, part narrative review and part new data analyses. We first updated previous analyses of national surveys that showed distress was increasing in the US and Australia through 2017 and then re-analyzed data from the UK, comparing periods with and without lockdowns. We also analyzed the effects of age and personality on distress in the US during the pandemic. Results showed distress levels and age differences in distress were still increasing through 2019 in the US, UK, and Australia. The effects of lockdowns in 2020 revealed the roles of social deprivation and fear of infection. Finally, age-related differences in emotional stability accounted for the observed age differences in distress. These findings reveal the limitations of analyses comparing pre-pandemic and pandemic periods without accounting for ongoing trends. They also suggest that differences in personality traits such as emotional stability modulate responses to stressors. This could explain age and individual differences in both increases and decreases in distress in response to changes in the level of stressors such as those occurring prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; age differences; psychological distress.

Figure 1

Changes in psychological distress across the years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Solid curves represent the quadratic functions that best fit the data through 2019 for the three age groups in each panel. Note that both axes vary slightly depending on the survey and that, whereas panel (a) and panel (b) present percentages experiencing serious distress, panel (c) presents mean scores on the GHQ-12. The dotted lines shown in the upper panel represent the predictions of the functions that best described distress in the US from 2008 to 2019 for each age group. (The predictions for the UK based on their national survey, the UKHLS, are not depicted here).

Figure 2

Psychological distress as a function of month in 2020 from the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS). Note that the first lockdown was in effect in April through June and the second lockdown began in November.

Figure 3

Percentages of females and males reporting serious psychological distress in the past year on the NSDUH surveys from 2008 to 2019.