Preventing Late-Life Depression: Lessons in Intervention Development From Goa, India

We describe the development of an intervention strategy for the indicated prevention of depression in older adults living in Goa, India. Of particular novelty, the intervention is deliverable by lay health counselors and is grounded in problem solving therapy for primary care and brief behavioral treatment for insomnia. We have named the intervention “DIL” (the Hindi word for “heart” and an acronym for “depression in late life.”) Additional DIL strategies include psychoeducation in self-management of co-occurring medical disorders such as diabetes mellitus, together with assistance in navigation to needed social and economic resources. We present the results of a preliminary open-trial case series involving 21 participants with subsyndromal symptoms of depression, demonstrating feasibility, acceptability, and benefit to participants. We then present the design of a larger confirmatory trial into which 181 participants have been enrolled. “DIL” is a novel and large depression prevention trial conducted with lay health counselors in a low-resource country. Its results are likely to have implications for depression prevention in older adults in other low- and middle-income countries and to inform contemporary models of the staging of depressive illness in later life.