'Covid made things worse for me': Older people felt lonely and neglected during pandemic

Hope and optimism are returning for older people but a new report also shows the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic led to loneliness and a feeling they were being neglected. The report, published by the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (Tilda), uses the experiences of 4,000 older people involved in the project to outline just how the pandemic has affected them since March 2020. According to the report, entitled In Their Own Words: The Voices of Older Irish People in the Covid-19 Pandemic, a fifth of respondents said they felt they had the capacity to cope or demonstrated resilience to the challenges of the public health emergency, while a similar percentage of people referred to increased feelings of social isolation or loneliness. Many said their greatest challenge was coping with the loneliness brought on by the pandemic, while others voiced their frustration at feeling neglected and disregarded by the media or public health commentators