The Covid-19 Pandemic Impact of the Disruption of Care on Elderly’s Psychological Health: Evidence from UK Population.

COVID-19 crisis, initially emerged from China in late 2019, is currently evident to significantly hamper the people’s wellbeing on so many levels around the world while badly damaging most of the country’s healthcare and financial system. This paper in particular, takes into account the inevitable damage in older adult’s psychological health that might have been caused due the global pandemic. The objective of this study is to evaluate the negative externality due to deteriorating mental health and potential negative effects on elderly’s mental/psychological health in April, 2020 due to disruption in the provision of informal care while compared with that of 2019, the previous year. The focus age group is the population equal to or over 65 years old who face comparatively higher potential health risk than the other age groups. In order to test the impact of the informal care disruption on elderly’s psychological health we took advantage of the longitudinal dimension of the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS) and British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). Indeed, we controlled for individuals’ mental health in the pre pandemic year (2019) to capture the potential onset mental health disorders that may be attributable to the disruption of care due to Covid-19 pandemic. Furthermore, we employed the General Health Questionnaire GHQ-12 which has become one of the most popular and used scale for detecting psychological distress and asks whether respondents have developed a particular symptom or behaviour recently. The findings of this study remain consistent with our initial hypothesis that a substantial level of deterioration in elderly’s occurred as a result of interruption in informal care provision due to the COVID-19 crisis. The findings also include an increasing trend in elderly’s psychological stress at the time of the pandemic in 2020 compared to that of in 2019. The results can be utilized as a basis for acknowledging the well-being issues associated with the prevention measures as social distancing and shielding especially among vulnerable and disadvantaged groups.