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Faculty of Health and Community Studies

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https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14078/25

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Browsing Faculty of Health and Community Studies by Author "Allana, Hunaina"

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    Anxiety symptoms and coping strategies used by older adults during COVID-19: a national e-study of linkages among and between them
    (2025) Low, Gail; França, Alex B.; Gao, Zhiwei; Gutman, Gloria; von Humboldt, Sofia; Allana, Hunaina; Wilson, Donna M.; Naz, Anila
    A global pandemic is a hardly typical and anxiety-dampening event. Research in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic tells of associations between advancing age and anxiety dampening. The aim of this study was to further investigate this by examining and creating a blueprint of older Canadians’ symptoms of pandemic-related anxiety and coping strategies, and linkages among and between them. A national e-survey was conducted in the second year of the pandemic with 1,327 older Canadians, when national public health measures lifted. Anxiety symptoms were measured using the Geriatric Anxiety Scale - 10. Participants also completed the Coping with Stress and Anxiety personal assessment tool. Network Analyses revealed a troubling trio of anxiety symptoms of central importance to our respondents: feelings of restlessness, muscle tension and having no control over their lives. Restless and no control over my life explained between 64–68% of the variance in 8 other anxiety symptoms. Coping seemed to occur through trial and error. Some strategies appeared to work in tandem and others in opposition to each other. Remembered resilience and staying active functioned as bridges shielding older people from worry, restlessness, and tension through spurning other remedial actions. This study provides evidence of a stable and predictable network of anxiety symptoms containing three particularly pernicious symptoms and the complex and arduous nature of mentally healthy recovery work. A visual representation of how anxiety symptoms can operate as a network might help older people better understand their own symptom experiences. Combining the two networks offers a blueprint of what within-person recovery might look like and a visual teaching tool for practitioners and program developers; older people could gain added insight into their own recovery experience.
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    Mitigating social isolation following the COVID-19 pandemic: remedy messages shared by older people
    (2024) Low, Gail; von Humboldt, Sofia; Gutman, Gloria; Gao, Zhiwei; Allana, Hunaina; Naz, Anila; Wilson, Donna M.; Vastani, Muneerah
    At the beginning of July 2022, when public health restrictions were lifted, we deployed a country-wide e-survey about how older people were managing now after COVID-19 pandemic-related anxiety. Our responder sample was stratified by age, sex, and education to approximate the Canadian population. E-survey responders were asked to share open-text messages about what contemporaries could do to live less socially isolated lives at this tenuous turning point following the pandemic as the COVID-19 virus still lingered. Contracting COVID-19 enhanced older Canadians’ risk for being hospitalized and/or mortality risk. Messages were shared by 1189 of our 1327 e-survey responders. Content analysis revealed the following four calls to action: (1) cultivating community; (2) making room for what is good; (3) not letting your guard down; and (4) voicing out challenges. Responders with no chronic illnesses were more likely to endorse making room for what is good. Those with no diploma, degree, or certificate least frequently instructed others to not let their guard down. While COVID-19 is no longer a major public health risk, a worrisome proportion of older people across the globe are still living socially isolated. We encourage health and social care practitioners and older people to share messages identified in this study with more isolated persons.