Psychosocial impacts of the COVID‐19 pandemic on women with trauma histories: Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN)

Abstract

Older adults, particularly those with trauma histories, may be vulnerable to adverse psychosocial outcomes during the COVID‐19 pandemic. We tested associations between prepandemic childhood abuse or intimate partner violence (IPV) and elevated depressive, anxiety, conflict, and sleep symptoms during the pandemic among aging women. Women ( N = 582, age: 65–77 years) from three U.S. sites (Pittsburgh, Boston, Newark) of the longitudinal Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN) reported pandemic‐related psychosocial impacts from June 2020–March 2021. Prepandemic childhood abuse; physical/emotional IPV; social functioning; physical comorbidities; and depressive, anxiety, and sleep symptoms were drawn from SWAN assessments between 2009 and 2017. There were no measures of prepandemic conflict. In total, 47.7% and 35.3% of women, respectively, reported childhood abuse or IPV. Using logistic regression models adjusted for age; race/ethnicity; education; site; prepandemic social functioning and physical comorbidities; and, in respective models, prepandemic depressive, anxiety, or sleep symptoms, childhood abuse predicted elevated anxiety symptoms, OR = 1.67, 95% CI [1.10, 2.54]; household conflict, OR = 2.19, 95% CI [1.32, 3.61]; and nonhousehold family conflict, OR = 2.14, 95% CI [1.29, 3.55]. IPV predicted elevated sleep problems, OR = 1.63, 95% CI [1.07, 2.46], and household conflict, OR = 1.96, 95% CI [1.20, 3.21]. No associations emerged for depressive symptoms after adjusting for prepandemic depression. Aging women with interpersonal trauma histories reported worse anxiety, sleep, and conflict during the COVID‐19 pandemic than those without. Women's trauma histories and prepandemic symptoms are critical to understanding the psychosocial impacts of the pandemic.

Complexities of intimate partner violence and insomnia: why some midlife women cannot sleep

“…Physical and emotional IPV in current relationships predicted elevated reported sleep problems and household conflict. 12 Thus, among midlife and older women, it is evident that exposures to violence earlier in life and of many types, including IPV, sexual abuse, EDITORIAL and physical, psychological, and verbal abuse, are associated with deteriorated sleep.…”