The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Trajectories of Well-Being of Middle-Aged and older Adults: A Multidimensional and Multidirectional Perspective

AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in profound changes of individuals ’ everyday lives. Restrictions in social contacts and in leisure activities and the threatening situation of a spreading virus might have resulted in compromised well-being. At the same time, the pandemic could have promoted specific aspects of psychosocial well-being, e.g., due to intensified rel ationships with close persons during lockdown periods. We investigated this potentially multidimensional and multi-directional pattern of pandemic-specific change in well-being by analyzing changes over up to 8 years (2012-2020) in two broad well-being domains, hedonic well-being (life satisfaction) and eudaimonic well-being (one overarching eudaimonic well-being indicator as well as environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relations with others, and self-acceptance), among 423 adults who were aged 40-98 years in 2012. By modelling longitudinal multilevel regression models and allowing for a measurement-specific intra-individual deviation component from the general slope in 2020, i.e. after the pandemic outbreak, we analyzed potential normative history-graded changes due to the pandemic. All mean-level history-graded changes were nonsignificant, but most revealed substantial inte rindividual variability, indicating that individuals’ pandemic-related well-being changes were remarkably heterogeneous. Only for personal growth and self-acceptance, adding a pandemic-related change component (and int...
Source: Journal of Happiness Studies - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research