Community resilience and psychological distress in Chinese older adults amid COVID-19: the roles of perceived community prevention effectiveness and risk perception

Objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic is sweeping the world, bringing a disaster for not only public physical but also mental health. As older adults are more vulnerable than those in other age groups in this disaster, their psychological distress in this pandemic is of particular concern. Considering the importance of communities in combating the pandemic, we examined the role of a community in relieving older adults' psychological distress and the heterogeneous effect by older adults' different levels of risk perception. Method: We collected data through a questionnaire survey of 272 older adults in 12 communities in the Sichuan province of China in April 2020, and used the structural equation model to analyze the data. Results: we found that community resilience was negatively associated with older adults' psychological distress (depression, anxiety, stress), and this association was mediated by perceived community prevention effectiveness. However, this indirect effect was stronger for older adults with low risk perceptions than for ones with high risk perceptions (including self-risk perception and group-risk perception). Conclusion: These findings underlined a community's vital significance in alleviating older adults' psychological distress amid the COVID-19 pandemic and moreover indicated that tailored interventions for facilitating community pandemic prevention should be designed for older adults with different risk perceptions.