Infodemia and Pandemic: impacts on the mental health of the elderly.
COVID-19; 2. COVID-19; 3. Pandemic; 4. Access to information; 5. Infodemic 6. Age
BARCELOS, T.S. COVID 19 Infodemia and Pandemic: impacts on the mental health of the elderly. [Dissertation]. Divinópolis: Graduate Program in Nursing - Academic Master's Degree at the Federal University of São João Del-Rei - 2022.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: With the increasing spread of the new COVID-19 virus and the strategies to contain it, there has also been an exponential spread of news, making it difficult for people to find credible evidence and reliable information, as well as verify the veracity of the information released. The world, then, was facing not only a COVID-19 pandemic, but also a global pandemic of disinformation, called the COVID-19 infodemic. The situation is worrying, especially with the elderly population, a group that has been considered to have greater physical and emotional vulnerability, associated with excessive exposure of information and misinformation, disseminated through communication channels. In short, it is necessary to deepen the knowledge about how this population translates information into the conditions of the aging process and old age.
Objective: to describe the sociodemographic profile and the repercussions of the COVID-19 infodemic on the mental health of the elderly in Divinópolis - MG.
Methods: estudo descritivo transversal pela técnica de entrevista da web-based-survey, com moradores de ≥60 anos de idade, residentes na cidade de Divinópolis, que tiveram acesso às informações sobre COVID-19, através das mídias digitais. O dados foram tratados com o Software JMP® PRO VERSÃO 13 e os recursos dos testes, Exato de Fisher, o teste não-paramétrico de Wilcoxon e o Índice de correlação linear de Pearson.
Results: A total of 381 elderly people participated in the study, 7 (1.89%) people preferred not to declare, with an age group concentrated between 60-69 (69.3%) years old, 99 (28.6%) with higher education and specialization, married 201 ( 52.8%), with their own residence 292 (76.7%) retired 273 (71.7%) and of these 64 (54.9%) have another type of income besides retirement, they did not change their income 273 (71 .7%), use private health services 238 (62.5%). %) and radio 185 (48.6%). It was possible to observe a significant difference (p-value < 0.05) in the prevalence of stress symptoms in female groups (p-value = 0.0029), without access to health services (p-value = 0, 0405). When the prevalence of depressive symptoms was evaluated, it was possible to observe a significant difference in female elderly (p-value = 0.0072), aged between 60-69 years (p-value = 0.002), with lower education ( p-value = 0.0005), who have no income (p-value = 0.0043) and with longer exposure to television (p-value = 0.0264). The prevalence of anxiety was observed in elderly females (p-value = 0.0011) who live with more than 3 residents (p-value = (0.0079).
Conclusion: Findings in this study revealed associations between psychopathological changes related to exposure to information and news about COVID-19 through television and reinforce the need for measures and public policies that highlight strategies to boost access and digital literacy for the elderly.