Depression Tendency Caused by Social Isolation: An Assessment on Older Adults in Turkey

COVID-19 pandemic required compulsory social isolation; thus, people have been forced to stay at home for months in the most part of world. The curfew has been specially imposed to people aged 65 and above, who are supposedly most affected by devastating effects of COVID-19 disease in Turkey. However, the curfew could cause negative mental difficulties like depression tendency. We aimed to determine the depression tendency by using depression indicators such as insomnia, poor appetite, despair, weariness, anxiety/fear, dereliction, lack of concentration, anger and trashiness on curfew-imposed older people aged 65 and above during outbreak. The participants (n = 119) were the students of Tazelenme University, the university of third age (U3A), of Antalya Campus. The inter-cluster linkage method and the squared Euclidean distance measurement level were used to construct clusters. Frequency, percentage, t-test, Pearson correlation tests were used for further analysis of the clusters. Two clusters were recovered. Statistically significant differences were found between the two clusters by mean comparison values in relation to age, years of education and household factors. Participants of Cluster 2 (average age 64.40) appeared to be more affected and more tend to be depressive than participants of Cluster 1 (average age 68.61). The results indicated a relationship between curfew and depression tendency.