20% SENIOR CITIZENS IN INDIA HAVE MENTAL ILLNESS: EXPERTS

LUCKNOW: United Kingdombased noted psychiatrists Dr G Ramanathan and Dr Pradeep Arya have praised the Indian social system which supports the senior citizens. They felt this was done in such a way that it outbalanced the government support provided by the UK to its elders as there was no system of children living with their parents there.

The two experts are i n Lucknow to participate in the Ninth National Annual Conference of Indian Association for Geriatric Mental Health (GERON 2013).

They pointed out that in India 20% of senior citizens suffer from mental illnesses in comparison to 6% to 7% in the UK. The lower percentage could be because of better medical care.

Speaking to Hindustan Times, Dr Ramanathan and Dr Arya said, “In the UK, the main cause of stress, anxiety and depression among the senior citizens is their social values which don’t permit their children to live with them after age of 18. Their, parents are left alone in the age when they need support. But in India reason for elders going into depression is poverty or sometimes bad behaviour by their children.”

In the UK, the government is concerned about the elders that’s why they have set up number of day care centres for senior citizens, where they can go during the day time and interact with each other and reduce their stress.

He said that the greatest challenge in India was the ‘‘expertise gap’ that affected clinicians practising in routine settings. The gap is the result of inadequate training in geriatric care at the undergraduate, as well as at the postgraduate level.

These barriers were further complicated by the acute national shortage of medical and social work professionals, who are trained in geriatric mental health care. Meanwhile, the second day of ‘GERON 2013’ started with a poster presentation session on Tuesday. Research in the field of geriatric mental health were displayed during the session.