Living Alone and Depressive Symptoms among Older Adults in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Role of Non-Face-to-Face Social Interactions.

The surveys were done in one Japanese municipality during an early stage of the pandemic, so the results may not apply to later periods or other places. Depressive symptoms were self-reported with a screen that the paper says has 60.5% specificity for major depression, so some people may have been classified incorrectly. Phone and email use was asked about by recall in the follow-up survey, which may introduce information bias. Only phone and email contact was measured, so video chat or social networking services were not included. Living alone and non-face-to-face contact may be markers of broader social resources, and residual confounding is possible. The paper reports that living arrangement was not associated with changes in depressive symptoms status, so the finding was not consistent across all symptom trajectories. Participants who changed living arrangement between surveys were excluded, so the results apply only to those whose living situation stayed the same.

Do not conclude that phone or email contact prevents depressive symptoms. This was an observational study, phone and email use was recalled, and the paper also reports that living arrangement was not associated with changes in depressive symptoms status.