Interventions to Promote Health and Mental Health among Older Adults

Abstract

This symposium 3 consists of three presentations commonly dealing with the physical and mental problems of the elderly people in South Korea which is rapidly becoming an aging society. Thus one of the most significant social issues in South Korea is how to prevent the expected social problems in the aging society with new scientific knowledge, the development of new treatment approaches, and policies. In this context, these three research funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea aims at exploring new scientific knowledge through various convergence research ideas and methodologies for solving these common social problems of the aging society. All are now at the initiating stages of their creative ideas, but they seem to be very promising for future research agendas and solutions. The first presentation(How do communication skills influence older patients’ satisfaction of health care services?: Empirical evidence from Korea) will focus on improving the communication skills of the aged by utilizing various patient-centered care methods such as active listening, responses to patients’ concerns, and the use of plan languages, developing a new patient-centered approach with convergence research method from the traditional top-down professionalist-centered treatment. The second presentation(The Impact of Physical Health and Social Networks on Depression Symptoms of Middle and Old Ages of Korean Urban and Rural Complex City) will focus on the reducing impact of the physical and health and social network activities on depression symptoms in the aged with the first wave data collection in an urban-rural complex city. The third presentation(Mental well-being of the elderly mindful storytelling and physical activity) will focus on the effect of mindful storytelling on the mental well-being of the elderly through physical activity, developing a new program to improve the quality of life of the aged by converging mindfulness and physical activities.