Resilience to depression and unchanged quality of life in Sardinian old adults during COVID-19 lockdown
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction: Older adults were expected to be particularly vulnerable to depressive symptoms during the COVID-19 lockdown due to social isolation, disruption of daily rhythms, and higher mortality risk. However, some studies have reported unexpected resilience in this population. This study aimed to assess resilience, operationalized as stability in depressive symptoms and health-related quality of life (H-QoL), before and during lockdown among older adults in Sardinia, Italy. Methods: We conducted a cohort follow-up study including community-dwelling older adults aged ≥65 years, originally enrolled in a randomized controlled trial promoting active aging. Participants were assessed at baseline (March-April 2019) and during lockdown (March-April 2020) using the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) and the Short-Form Health Survey (SF-12). Three groups were analyzed: 1. Study cohort, same participants assessed before and during lockdown (pre-post comparison). 2. National matched sample, extracted from a large Italian epidemiological survey, matched by age and sex, for comparison of SF-12 scores. 3. Regional matched sample, extracted from a Sardinian epidemiological survey, matched by age and sex, for comparison of PHQ-9 prevalence rates. Statistical analyses included ANOVA for continuous variables and Chi-square tests for proportions. Results: Ninety-three older adults (mean age 73.4 ± 5 years; 53.8% female) were included in the study cohort. No significant differences were found in SF-12 scores between baseline and lockdown (35.7 ± 4.5 vs. 34.3 ± 6.4; F (1,84) = 2.999, p = 0.085) or in PHQ-9 scores (2.3 ± 3.0 vs. 2.3 ± 3.5; F (1,84) = 0.035, p = 0.851). The proportion of participants with moderate/severe depressive symptoms (PHQ-9 ≥10) showed a non-significant increase (3.2% vs. 6.5%; p = 0.305). Comparisons with the national and regional matched samples also revealed no statistically significant differences. Discussion: Older adults in Sardinia demonstrated resilience during lockdown, maintaining stable levels of depressive symptoms and quality of life. Potential protective factors include strong family networks, maintenance of daily rhythms, and limited digital overexposure. These findings align with reports from other Western countries and warrant further research into cultural and social determinants of resilience in aging populations during crises. Clinical trial number: NCT03858114.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".