Fighting against Harmful Social Stigmas

The population of people over sixty in India is the fastest growing demographic in the world. This leads to a common concern: the concern that many of these seniors cannot take care of themselves in their old age.India itself is a very traditional society with strict familial duties – duties that include caring and providing for ones’ parents.

Many seniors are left without anyone at home to take care of them. For example, their only family may be NRIs, nonresidential Indians, who live overseas and cannot tend to their parents’ needs. Or these seniors may wish to take their care into their own hands and choose a safe and entertaining facility for themselves.

Unfortunately, these seniors and their families have very few options.

Desperate NRI families unable to oversee their parents’ care, they may hire caretakers for their parents only to find that these caretakers are lacking skills and compassion for care. In these cases families feels guilty for not caring for their parents.

However, there is a dangerously ludicrous social stigma that comes with alternative options such as senior care facilities and old age homes. This stigma seems to imply that families that resort to admitting their parents, or even themselves, into these homes somehow have failed in their familial duties and roles. However, this idea stubbornly ignores the fact that senior care facilities such as PapayaCare provide elders with safety and entertainment and NRI families with security and reassurance that their families are in a safe environment.

Senior care facilities not only have the equipment and experience needed to take care of ailing elderly with medical problems, they also have the care and compassion that is often lacking with many so-called “caretakers.” However, until these stigmas are demolished, many Indian elders will live in ignorance of these options.

These same traditional values have led to social stigmas. Meanwhile, facilities like Papaya Care will continue to fight against the perpetuation of these harmful social stigmas.