Bridget Fraser, Colleen Doyle, and Anita Goh
National Ageing Research Institute
Researchers at National Ageing Research Institute compare the pre- and post-pandemic ‘rollercoaster’ media coverage of loneliness experienced by older people living in residential aged care and the social support available to them. They find an increased media focus on these issues during the pandemic that needs to translate into ongoing initiatives for improving the mental health and wellbeing of aged care residents.
One of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic was raising awareness of mental health and wellbeing. We all learnt to manage restrictions to movement and especially the ways we socialised and kept in contact with friends and family. However, prioritising physical health often meant mental health was challenged. Constant media reports about the dangers associated with the new virus bombarded us in 2020 and 2021. In 2022 media attention to COVID-19 has plummeted. This roller coaster of media coverage was nowhere more evident than in reporting about older people living in residential aged care.
We recently assessed how a major Australian newspaper reported on loneliness and social support of people living in residential aged care before the COVID-19 pandemic compared to during the pandemic. We conducted a search of The Age newspaper’s reporting of loneliness and social support in people living in residential aged care. The newspaper was chosen as the media source as it is a common and trusted source of health information in Australia, with 15.7 million Australians reading them in print or online (Roy Morgan, 2019). Articles were identified through the newspaper databases Factiva and NewsBank, alongside The Age online website. The two search periods were pre-pandemic (TP1 = January 2018 until December 2019) and during the pandemic (TP2= January 2020 until December 2021). Search terms: ‘nursing home’, ‘residential aged care’, or ‘aged care’ were used alongside at least one of the terms; ‘loneliness’, ‘befriending’, or ‘social support’. The inclusion criteria were broad and included news reports, opinion pieces, advertising features, TV show reviews, alongside spectrum, green guide, and lifestyle pieces.
Information about the article characteristics (i.e., format, source, author), the content presented, total word count, photos, or videos was analysed. The Table below shows that reporting increased markedly during the pandemic.
Table 1: Summary of the volume of articles published in two time periods
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*These totals include The Age Online articles, which are duplicates of the articles that often contain additional words and include additional photos and videos. Four duplicates were published in TP1, and eight duplicates were published in TP2.
** Images were of aged care residents and paintings or drawings of aged care residents.
*** The remaining articles have up to four paragraphs dedicated to loneliness in aged care.
The themes of the articles differed between the two time periods. During TP1, 32% (n=6) of articles referred to a specific aged care facility, Trinity Manor and how it followed the Eden philosophy. In total, 63% (n=12) of TP1 articles reported ways that social support could be increased to reduce loneliness. A total of 21% (n=4) of TP1 articles mention an aged care resident by name. During TP2, 78% (n=21) of articles detailed the impact of COVID-19 on aged care residents, specifically due to the inability to have visitors. In total 59% (n=16) of these TP2 articles detailed the importance of having family members visit them. All up 30% (n=8) of TP1 articles specifically referred to programs that were in place to combat loneliness in aged care facilities, such as the ‘Conversation in Isolation’ project, the Commonwealth visitors scheme and the T.V show ‘Old peoples home for 4-year olds’. A total of 26% (n=7) of TP2 articles referred to health care services, especially the need for more staff in these aged care facilities. And 26% (n=7) of TP2 articles described the need for government funding to reduce loneliness in aged care facilities.
We found that during the pandemic there was an increase in The Age’s media coverage surrounding loneliness and social support in residential aged care. There were more opinion pieces published, longer articles published, and more supporting assets published alongside the article (images and videos).
The pre-pandemic articles focussed more on specific aged care facilities, and on the ways that social support was already being provided to residents. There was some reporting on ways that social support could be increased to reduce loneliness, but these were not detailed. During the pandemic, the articles covered a larger breadth of topics relating to loneliness in aged care and reported more specific and detailed methods of improvement. There was a larger focus on different ways social support can be increased in aged care to reduce loneliness, for instance through government funding and improvements in health services, and especially encouraging family members to make contact.
Our analysis showed that the pandemic has resulted in increased media attention on loneliness in aged care as a situation that needs immediate solutions, and increased reporting of the need for social support to be increased. As the media move away from COVID-19 reporting, let’s hope that the raised awareness does not fade away but leads to ongoing action to improve the mental health and wellbeing of older people living in residential care.
*The views and opinions expressed in Knowledge Blogs are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of ARIIA, Flinders University and/or the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care.
Author information
Bridget Fraser is a LaTrobe University student, enrolled in a Bachelor of Health Sciences and Public Health, who undertook this reported analysis as part of a placement at NARI.
Professor Colleen Doyle is Honorary Fellow at NARI and Honorary Professor at Swinburne University.
Dr Anita Goh is a senior research fellow at NARI and a clinical neuropsychologist.