P181: Outreach initiative to promote healthy ageing: Experiences from a Geriatric Psychiatry Unit in India

Abstract

Aim:

To describe the experience, challenges and solutions in implementing an outreach initiative to promote healthy ageing

Background:

Prevalence of mental health conditions in older adults is increasing rapidly in developing countries like India due to population ageing. UN Decade of Healthy Ageing (2021-2030) has been launched with focus on combatting ageism, promoting age friendly environment, integrated care and providing access to good quality long term care. Implementing interventions to promote healthy ageing in the Indian context has significant challenges in the background of limited availability dedicated elderly friendly health and social care systems.

Methods:

Description of the outreach initiatives launched by the Geriatric Psychiatry Unit, Department of Psychiatry, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences a tertiary care academic unit for old age psychiatry in India.

Results:

A systematic and comprehensive outreach initiative for healthy ageing has been implemented over 2 years. The main objectives for the initiative includes promoting awareness about ageing and mental health, promoting age friendly environment, training of caregivers, volunteers and other stakeholders, psychosocial intervention in old age homes, promoting integrative medicine for healthy ageing and providing geriatric tele-psychiatry services. The important strengths of this initiative has been collaboration with non-governmental organizations, promoting active participation from older adults and volunteers, mobilizing resources through corporate social responsibility funding and effective use of technology.

Conclusion:

The experience of implementing this outreach initiative has contributed to important learnings for the team. The proposed solutions to address the challenges in sustaining this initiative and scaling up to reach a larger population will be discussed.