P4: Help-Seeking Factors Among Older Adults on the National Psychosocial Support Helpline on COVID-19 in India

Abstract

The pandemic has halted the traditional way of life as we used to know it. Due to the highly contagious nature of the virus, physical distancing had become the primary norm for reducing the spread, inevitably leading to social isolation. The older adult population is vulnerable to environmental changes, making them very prone to stress during disasters. Comorbidities, lack of social support, loneliness and uncertainty can be common precipitating factors. The National Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences, with the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, commenced a helpline to provide psychosocial support and mental health services in thirteen languages to distressed persons across the Indian subcontinent. The study aims to explore the help-seeking factors due to which older adult callers have sought help from the helpline during the COVID-19 pandemic by analysing the call recordings and, as a secondary objective, to develop a checklist to assess the psychosocial issues of older adults to be used by telephone- based psychosocial care providers. The researcher would use a “Naturalised” conceptual framework of transcription, which would necessitate a literal interpretation of the call recordings. Recordings of the calls made will be transcribed. “Thematic analysis” shall be conducted to find psychosocial issues older adult callers face. Categories would be identified, refined, and specified for coding. A series of key-informant interviews would be conducted online with a group of mental health professionals (defined as per the Mental Health Care Act, 2017) associated with or working in geriatric mental health. The findings from the study would help look into the evolution of psychosocial needs of the older adult population during a pandemic and would also reflect the different aspects of telephone-based psychosocial support and mental health services and their need during disasters. The study’s outcome would reveal the needs of this at-risk populace and explore the issues and concerns unique to the COVID- 19 pandemic. The findings would also be a substructure for future studies that would probe into research areas analogues to pandemics and other biological disasters, telephone-based psychosocial support, and the older adult populace.