During the COVID-19 pandemic, older and clinically vulnerable people were instructed to shield or stay at home. Policies restricting social contact and human interaction pose a risk to mental health, but we know very little about the impact of shielding and stay-at-home orders on the mental health of older people.

To understand the extent to which shielding contributes to poorer mental health.

We used longitudinal data from wave 9 (2018/2019) and two COVID-19 sub-studies (June/July 2020; November/December 2020) of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, and constructed logistic and linear regression models to investigate associations between patterns of shielding during the pandemic and mental health, controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, pre-pandemic physical and mental health, and social isolation measures.

By December 2020, 70% of older people were still shielding or staying at home, with 5% shielding throughout the first 9 months of the pandemic. Respondents who shielded experienced worse mental health. Although prior characteristics and lack of social interactions explain some of this association, even controlling for all covariates, those shielding throughout had higher odds of reporting elevated depressive symptoms (odds ratio 1.87, 95% CI 1.22–2.87) and lower quality of life (β = −1.28, 95% CI −2.04 to −0.52) than those who neither shielded nor stayed at home. Shielding was also associated with increased anxiety.

Shielding seems associated with worse mental health among older people, highlighting the need for policy makers to address the mental health needs of those who shielded, both in the current pandemic and for the future.

在 COVID-19 大流行期间，老年人和临床上易受伤害的人被指示屏蔽或留在家中。限制社会接触和人际交往的政策对心理健康构成风险，但我们对屏蔽和居家令对老年人心理健康的影响知之甚少。

了解屏蔽在多大程度上导致更差的心理健康。

我们使用了英国老龄化纵向研究的第 9 波（2018/2019）和两个 COVID-19 子研究（2020 年 6 月/7 月；2020 年 11 月/12 月）的纵向数据，并构建了逻辑和线性回归模型来调查之间的关联大流行期间的屏蔽模式和心理健康，控制社会人口特征，大流行前的身心健康以及社会隔离措施。

到 2020 年 12 月，70% 的老年人仍在隔离或待在家里，其中 5% 的老年人在大流行的前 9 个月一直在隔离。屏蔽的受访者经历了更糟糕的心理健康。尽管先前的特征和缺乏社交互动解释了这种关联的部分原因，即使控制了所有协变量，那些自始至终屏蔽的人报告抑郁症状升高的几率更高（比值比 1.87，95% CI 1.22-2.87）和较低的生活质量（β = -1.28, 95% CI -2.04 到 -0.52）比那些既不屏蔽也不待在家里的人。屏蔽也与焦虑增加有关。

屏蔽似乎与老年人的心理健康状况恶化有关，这凸显了政策制定者在当前大流行和未来都需要解决那些屏蔽的人的心理健康需求。