Social participation and depressive symptoms among older adults during the Covid-19 pandemic in Serbia: A cross-sectional study.

The study was cross-sectional and used self-report, so it cannot show that reduced social participation caused depression or that increasing activities would improve mood. Participants were a convenience sample of 299 cognitively intact older adults in Serbia, so results may not apply to other countries or to people with dementia. The study excluded people with impaired vision, hearing, speech or language, psychiatric illness, malignant disease, poor health or disorientation, so it does not speak to many frail older adults. There were no measurements before the pandemic, so the paper cannot separate long-standing differences from pandemic effects. The authors did not know why residents were placed in nursing homes, which may affect both participation and depression.

The research received no special support from public, commercial or non-profit financial agencies, and the authors declared no competing interests.

Do not conclude that increasing social activities will reduce depression. This was a cross-sectional survey, so it only shows that lower social participation and more depressive symptoms occurred together; it did not test an activity programme and had no pre-pandemic baseline.