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The COVID-19 pandemic brought significant changes to the usual rhythm of life. Reduced opportunities to meet with family members and friends in a situation of heightened stress leads to increased feelings of loneliness and social isolation, as well as increases the risk of mental health problems. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effect of social contacts on the changes in psychoemotional states in the elderly population in Latvia during the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The analysis draws upon quantitative data collected by the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe within Wave 8 in Latvia (n=1207). Measurements of the frequency of social contacts were used to construct social isolation indexes. Changes of psychoemotional state, characterized by sleeping problems, nervousness, frustration during the pandemic were included as dependent variables in multinomial logistic regression models that were run to identify the effect of social isolation on psychoemotional health in the context of other factors: age, gender, perceived health status, affluence and feelings of loneliness. The results show that in the group of those aged 50+, close to one-fifth of respondents experienced the effect of the COVID-19 crisis on their mental health. The link between reduced social contacts and changes in psychoemotional states proved to be statistically significant. In the group with the highest level of social isolation, irregularities in psychoemotional health are three times higher compared to other groups.

The purpose of this study was to determine the structure of anomia among the inhabitants of the Baltic states and to investigate whether there are relations between different dimensions of anomia and personal values. The secondary data from the E uropean Values Study (EVS, 2008) were used. The sample consisted of the inhabitants of Latvia (n = 1506), Lithuania (n = 1500), and Estonia (n = 1518). For measurement of anomia and values questions from the original questionnaire of the EVS were used. In this study five components of anomia were found, namely, l ocal social distrust, local social isolation, normlessness, global social distrust, and global social isolation. Numerous relations between anomia and values were found. It was found that there are the following common, similar patterns of relations between anomia and values of the inhabitants of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia: (1) the importance of politics and religion is negatively associated with all dimensions of anomia (with one exception – there is no found the significant relation between the importance of religion and global social distrust in Latvia); (2) the importance of work and family is negatively associated with normlessness; (3) the importance of friends and acquaintances is negatively associated with global social distrust. Estonia was the only country for which it was found that the value of friends and acquaintances was negatively associated with global social isolation and the value of leisure time was negatively associated with local and global social distrust. The value of leisure time was positively associated with local social isolation in Lithuania and with normlessness in Latvia.