The Role of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions for the Mental Health Consequences of Widowhood during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Résumé
Spousal loss is associated with immediate declines in mental health. However, the mental health consequences of widowhood during the Covid-19 pandemic have remained largely unexplored. In this research note, we use data from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe and fixed effects regression modelling to address three research questions: (1) How has the mental health of older adults changed across time in 10 European countries? (2) Do the surviving spouses of persons who died during the pandemic face greater declines in mental health compared to adults widowed prior to the pandemic? (3) To what extent did the strictness of non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) moderate the pandemic widowhood penalty for mental health? We found that feelings of depression increased dramatically for those widowed during the pandemic compared to widowed adults prior to the pandemic. In addition, the pandemic widowhood penalty does not apply to all those who lost their partners during the pandemic, but only to those who lost their partner during periods when strict NPIs were being enforced by governments. Our findings support that notion that the Covid-19 pandemic and strict NPIs exacerbated risk factors and hindered protective factors that affect older adults’ resilience to spousal death.
