Problem/issue being addressed : Mental health and emotional well-being during old age (60+) should be regarded as important as at any other time of a persons’ life. Older people are more likely to experience events that affect emotional well-being, such as bereavement or disability. Unfortunately, mental health problems are under identified by healthcare professionals and older people themselves are also less likely to seek help as compared to other people in the population. It is estimated that over the next 30 years, the proportion of elderly people is estimated to almost double from approximately 12% to 22% (2 billion people of 60+ by 2050).
Older people are confronted with a variety of physical and mental health challenges and unfortunately these are not always, if indeed at all, thoroughly addressed. The assessment of our elderly population, with respect to mental health therefore requires an understanding of the full spectrum of the mental health continuum, and not to categorise everything into a ‘neurological disease’ or ‘dementia’ category. In particular, we would need to dissect the complex interaction between specific medical conditions, mental stress as part of the ageing process and social circumstances. To be able to offer effective support to tacking this issue, our project aims to implement novel scientific and technological innovations, including strengthening of information systems. Subjective Well-Being (SWB) and quality of life (QOL) are broad terms that are used to define the cognitive and affective make-up of an individual. The ‘cognitive element’ refers to an individual’s own satisfactory view of life in global terms (their life as a whole), and in domain terms, to specific areas of life such as work, health, religion, relationships, etc. The ‘affective element’ refers to the individual’s emotions, moods and feelings.
The goal of RISE-WELL is to improve SWB and the QOL of elderly European citizens to obtain positive individual health outcomes and to promote future translational research. The approach of the consortium has been to design cutting-edge WPs and ESR projects.
Importance for society: SWB is strongly impacted by many important biological outcomes, which includes the immune system, cardiovascular function, pain tolerance, exercise and food. This is especially the case if we look at older adults, who make important contributions to society as family members and lending their knowledge and life experience to be passed down to a younger generation. As people age, they are also more likely to experience several conditions, e.g. diabetes, hearing loss and osteoarthritis, at the same time (comorbidity). Older people encounter mental health challenges, which need to be solved as otherwise with comorbidity, the health situation can deteriorate very rapidly for the elderly. RISE-WELL contributes to European innovation capacity through its research output and sustainable capacity building.
The RISE-WELL research agenda on SWB and its underlying processes addresses key societal challenges in health and SWB as outlined in the Horizon 2020 Work Programme (
https://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/h2020-sections(opens in new window)) the 3rd Health Programme, and mission statements in Joint Programming Initiatives on Healthy Diet for a Healthy Life and Ageing (http://www.healthydietforhealthylife.eu /index.php/hdhl-documents/key-documents).
Overall objectives: The major objective of RISE-WELL is to bring about improvement in the SWB of elderly European citizens so that we obtain positive individual health outcomes, whilst simultaneously decreasing the economic and healthcare burden that is faced by many countries in Europe. This will be facilitated by a) the need to address those mechanisms that influences SWB in the elderly; b) development of short-term action and long-term strategic plans, including the building of infrastructure, for senior citizens to coping with mental stress and c) implementation of novel scientific and technological innovations, including strengthening of information systems, to supporting the elderly.
RISE-WELL will achieve these objectives through four Work Packages, in which 9 ESRs will work towards the objectives of WP2 addressing the issue of mental health in the elderly and enhancing their SWB and QOL. The project will further be guided by WP1, a broad training programme for all ESRs and WP3, with active participation of all ESRs. WP4 supports WPs 1-3 by navigating the consortium.
