Community-Based Healthy Ageing Education and Mental Health Literacy Among Older Adults in Miri, Sarawak

Abstract

Population ageing is accelerating in Malaysia, creating an urgent need for community-based approaches that strengthen mental-health literacy and social support among older adults. This community engagement programme evaluated a healthy-ageing knowledge-transfer session delivered at a Pusat Aktiviti Warga Emas (PAWE) centre in Miri, Sarawak. A one-group pretest-posttest design was used because the original programme did not include a control group. Nineteen valid questionnaires were analysed after a 2.5-hour face-to-face session on 19 June 2025. The intervention covered healthy ageing, depression in later life, protective factors, and the role of structured social support. The instrument comprised sociodemographic items and 10 knowledge questions administered immediately before and after the session. Because only summary percentages were available, analysis was descriptive and focused on percentage-point changes. Participants were predominantly women (68.4%), with a mean age of 66.16 years. The largest gains occurred for knowledge of major protective factors against depression (+31.5 percentage points), awareness of the proportion of older adults affected by mental-health problems (+26.3), understanding of structured social support (+15.8), and recognition of PAWE’s role (+10.5). Three abstract or exception-based items declined after the session. The programme was feasible and showed promising short-term educational gains, but the absence of a control group and paired individual-level data limits causal interpretation. Future programmes should use booster sessions, age-friendly visual materials, and controlled or paired-data evaluation.