Background The Covid-19 pandemic and actions to reduce transmission (stay at home orders, work place closure, etc) have had an impact on mental health, loneliness, and wellbeing, but with marked variations in response. It might be expected that socially isolated people would be particularly vulnerable. We therefore investigated depression, loneliness, and life satisfaction in 2020 among older men and women who were already socially isolated before the pandemic.

Methods Data were collected from 4,636 participants in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA) in 2018/19 and then early (June/July 2020) and later (November/December 2020) in the Covid-19 pandemic. Standard measures of the outcomes, namely depressive symptoms, loneliness, and life satisfaction, were analysed. Respondents were classified as socially isolated or not isolated using an index including marital status, having limited contact with relatives and friends, and membership of clubs and organisations. Longitudinal mixed models were used to compare changes in the outcomes across the observation period, between older adults who were already socially isolated and those who were not isolated before the pandemic.

Results The sample was aged 66.8 years on average, and 29% were categorised as already isolated before the pandemic. Before the pandemic, compared with non-isolated respondents, the isolated group reported more depressive symptoms, greater loneliness, and lower life satisfaction. But their responses to the pandemic were small; it was the non-isolated participants who experienced greater increases in loneliness and greater reductions in life satisfaction after adjusting for age, gender, ethnicity, education, wealth, area deprivation, number of people living in the household, and long-term health conditions.

Conclusion Although older isolated people generally experience greater loneliness and lower psychological wellbeing, they were somewhat protected from the adverse impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The restrictions imposed during the pandemic had a more deleterious effect on socially engaged people, whereas isolated individuals experienced fewer changes in their circumstances.