Open AccessPrevention in old age psychiatry in low-resource settings
Author(s) -
Bichitra Nanda Patra
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
indian journal of social psychiatry (online)/indian journal of social psychiatry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2454-8316
pISSN - 0971-9962
DOI - 10.4103/ijsp.ijsp_36_17
Subject(s) - psychosocial , mental health , psychiatry , medicine , mental illness , isolation (microbiology) , population , resource (disambiguation) , social isolation , psychology , environmental health , computer network , computer science , microbiology and biotechnology , biology
Recently, the global population is aging as a result of demographic transition. The elderly are at a higher risk of developing mental illness. This could be due to many reasons including biological factors such as multiple physical illnesses and their treatments and psychosocial factors such as migration, social isolation, and changing family structure. At times, the psychiatric illnesses in the elderly present with atypical features and often go unnoticed. There is a huge treatment gap in addressing the mental health issues of older adults in low-resource countries like India. So far, the preventive aspects in psychiatry are less developed and the mental health care mainly focuses on sickness and treatment. As the number of trained mental health professionals and resources allocated to the field of mental health is meager in low-resource settings, prevention of psychiatric disorders in older adults seems to be a cost-effective option for these settings. In this article, various measures for prevention of psychiatric disorders in elderly low-resource settings have been discussed