Dr. Becci Dow, Clinical Psychologist, Pscyhology Lead and Clinical Manager, Shanghai
Older people’s well-being needs are not something that you would expect to be discussed at LIH Olivia’s Place – a pediatric clinic. Developing new services and being involved with research is something LIH Olivia’s Place is doing more of and is an effective way to change the culture towards those with rehabilitation needs across China. A combination of fortuitous meetings, circumstances, and shared interests has led to a collaborative piece of work to improve well-being in a community population of older people with low mood in Shanghai and Hangzhou.
Nottingham University in the UK is a tier 1 academic institution with interests across the world, including a campus in Ningbo. It also happens to be where our Chief Therapy Officer, Lis Ringrose, trained and where I worked in research for many years. Over the past 10 years Nottingham has forged links with Fudan and Jiatong Universities in Shanghai as well as Tongde Hospital in Hangzhou. The latest collaboration is a project, funded by the UK Foreign Office, to screen older people (aged 55-80) in the community for depression and train community staff to deliver an 8 week group support programme.
The health, emotional and social needs of older adults are significant and as the population across the world ages there is increasing awareness and concern about how these can be met. It is known that older people continue to contribute greatly to the economy, not least here in China through their extensive input as family caregivers. There is also substantial evidence that the combination of health problems, social needs, and distress places a large financial and emotional burden on the family and on the state. Most important is the need to introduce known effective strategies to improve well-being. So finding a quick and transferable means of intervention is a priority.
So where does LIH Olivia’s Place stand?
Again, happenstance meant that my experience as a consultant in older adult/geriatric psychology was identified by Professor Tom Dening, Psychiatry Lead at the Institute of Dementia at Nottingham. He asked if I could contribute to the project and I have now met with the key collaborators, Professor Fu Hua (School of Public Health, Fudan University) and Dr Jianmin Zhang (Vice President and Chief Psychiatrist, Tongde Hospital of Zhejiang Province).
Working alongside them, I am drawing together a manual for a group intervention, looking at using cognitive behaviour therapy ideas, group activities, and culturally appropriate methods to improve well-being. The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) will be used to measure pre-and post group mood and the leaders for the groups will attend a training session with the team to develop their skills.
Once the pilot phase is reviewed it is hoped that a Chinese language manual can be produced. The could be easily followed by other community groups and can become a resource to be adapted for older people and delivered within their communities to take real steps towards addressing well-being needs where currently no help is available.
The parallels with the LIH Olivia’s Place’ mission to introduce high quality rehabilitation services to the Chinese community are obvious. Meeting the needs of a community group often overlooked is a priority and with the merger of Olivia’s Place and LIH Changhe, we are now working to not only help the pediatric population of China, but the adult population as well. In fact, we are now working on building a 100 bed in-patient/outpatient adult/pediatric rehabilitation hospital that will help take us a step closer towards reaching this mission.