Research

October 14, 2021

The magnitude of the tragedy is unfathomable: Americans have lost nearly 187,000 family members living in nursing homes to COVID-19.

Even when residents survive outbreaks in the facilities, their family caregivers experience trauma. Barred from visiting residents during the lockdowns, caregivers observed – on Zoom, over the phone, or from the other side of a nursing home window – loved ones suffering from the devastating impact of isolation.

“To think in her final year[s] when she is most vulnerable and most in need of love and support from her children and was denied this for 6 months is in my opinion devastating,” one caregiver said in a survey of 518 caregivers, the vast majority of them women and mainly daughters.

Granted, nursing homes – and the entire country – were not prepared for a once-in-a-century pandemic that has been difficult to control, given that COVID-19 is often asymptomatic. The lockdowns were a health precaution. Many nursing homes were also put in an untenable position when COVID-19 created staff shortages as nursing assistants and other workers took time off after contracting the disease or simply quit their jobs. And perhaps better communication between nursing home staff and family members would have eased some of the concerns.

Nevertheless, the caregivers’ perceptions of what unfolded inside nursing homes are alarming. “Anger,” “helplessness” and “heartbreak” were common reactions, conveyed in the survey compiled in the Journal of Aging & Social Policy.

The situation became so untenable for 30 of the caregivers surveyed that they pulled their parent or family member out of a facility and brought them home to live with them.

Four themes pervaded their descriptions of what their loved ones were going through: social isolation, cognitive and emotional decline, inhumane care, and a lack of oversight at the long-term care facilities.

The source of many caregivers’ concerns were nursing homes’ decisions to confine residents to their rooms to prevent contagion. But one caregiver said that while her mother’s facility went to great lengths to keep her healthy, the staff did little to ease her isolation: “Almost no effort has been made to ensure [her] mental health due to the isolation. Staff rarely stay and visit with Mom, no special in-room activities or stimulation has been attempted.” …Learn More

August 24, 2021

Last year, millions of older Americans went into hiding to protect themselves from the ravages of COVID-19.

Did the isolation take a psychological toll? How did they respond to infrequent contact with friends and family? Researchers in a recent webinar tried to understand the unique phenomenon of loneliness in a modern pandemic.

What we know from the National Poll on Healthy Aging in the early months of the pandemic is that more than half of older workers and retirees between 50 and 80 said they “felt isolated from others” – twice the levels seen in 2018.

In a different survey conducted every two months for most of last year, loneliness was “common and it was incredibly persistent during the first six months of the pandemic,” said Lindsay Kobayashi, a University of Michigan epidemiologist involved in the COVID-19 Coping Study, a survey of adults over age 55.

Two groups in particular suffered rates of loneliness that were twice as high as their peers: older people who live alone and residents of senior communities and nursing homes, where staff often separated the residents or confined them to their rooms in an attempt to protect their health.

A larger share of Black Americans also expressed feelings of loneliness than whites and Hispanics, and women were generally more lonely than men. “I’m very afraid that we are going to get so used to being alone, on our own, by ourselves that we won’t reconnect the way we need to,” a 76-year-old woman told the Coping Study researchers last fall.

But the news isn’t all bad. Feelings of loneliness, especially among the oldest retirees, had subsided a bit as early as November as news reports emerged that the vaccines were effective. Older people also found ways to cope with their isolation, and some even felt the pandemic gave them a renewed sense of purpose, according to a pair of studies in The Gerontologist. …Learn More

October 20, 2020

Working mothers scrambled when the schools shut their doors last spring, but they found ways to cope. The 2020-21 school year may push many of them over the edge.

Last spring, one in four women nationwide who’d either quit their jobs or were laid off blamed the difficulties of working after the schools closed or they lost child care to COVID-19, a Northeastern survey found.

Alicia Sasser Modestino is in the midst of repeating the survey but believes that the situation has only gotten harder for working mothers this fall.

“When you look down the barrel of a full school year of hybrid or remote learning,” the stopgap measures mothers deployed last spring “are not sustainable,” said Modestino, a mother of four and research director for Northeastern’s Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy.

“If it’s not going to be Congress giving money for schools to reopen safely or the state opening child care centers, a parent is going to have to give up their job, and we know from history that it’s more likely to be women,” she said.

The impact of school closings on Millennials and Generation X can’t be overstated. In 75 of the 100 largest U.S. school districts, returning to school has meant students connecting to Zoom from their bedrooms or kitchen tables.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, a disproportionate share of women have been laid off, because they dominate face-to-face industries – nursing, retail, customer service – that are more vulnerable to closing. But something new is happening to mothers in this downturn. …Learn More