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Poster Short Abstract

Mental health is unequally distributed in Sweden's elderly population. Still, solutions are often shaped by preconceived notions and ageism. In this citizen science project, we invite elderly persons to shape the project and share their stories, answering the question: How do you feel good?

Poster Abstract

The mental health of the elderly is frequently overlooked, even though there are obvious unmet needs, especially in some subpopulations. Suggested solutions are often shaped by preconceived notions, while the voices of the elderly are less often heard; older people are often talked about and rarely talked with. Therefore, we invited elderly people to participate in a citizen science study using focus group discussions, science cafés and narratives.

As a first step, focus group discussions (FGD) with stakeholders were conducted, to map current discussions and interests. In the next step, we used the insight from FGDs to arrange science cafés; a dialogue between researchers and the public. A reference group was established with the help of civil society organisations and via science cafés. They helped us shape our data collection: narratives from the elderly around mental health during ageing, answering the question ‘How do you feel good?’, which was analysed together with the reference group. Through this, we aimed to reach insights that were both rooted in the narratives from the elderly themselves and analysed in collaboration with them.

This study is part of a larger EU-funded research project, Re-MEND (Building REsilience against MEntal illness during ENDocrine-sensitive life stages), where mental health in sensitive life stages is examined more broadly. As such, our findings will be fed into other projects within REMEND. We are currently in the processing of analysing the narratives and will present thematic findings and our experiences of working with this method and target group.