Promote Healthy Aging in Finland

One of the Finnish Blue Ribbon organisations benefiting from the Pilke Groups- Fingerros Foundation has brought the issue of loneliness and aging to public debate in a Finnish TV programme Inhimillinen Tekijä. This organisation especially searches lonely aging people in order to prevent negative effects of loneliness: alcohol abuse, depression, suicidal thoughts, isolation to their apartment.

82 year old lady tells her story of living on her own after her retirement. She tells she worked very hard in a bank when she was younger and never started a family. Now after her career, she has now been 20 years on her own. She says it is very hard to talk about this experience of living in isolation. She is now suffering from Parkinson’s disease and she has finally found this Fingerroos Foundation that provides her a social network through their activities.

These examples show the important work done through Finnish Blue Ribbon. It is vital to continue these trainings to help communities and professionals to support aging population that that are at risk. Sadly in a welfare state in Finland every other day one over 65 year old person commits a suicide. This means something is still not right in the society when this happens, we must find these isolated aging individuals and this projects has still a lot of work to do!

Thank you for your continued support!

Inhimillinen Tekijä YLE : https://t.co/9B3VAczuCy  In the picture Anne Finkkilä, Tanja Kuronen, Aino Auranen, Ulla-Maija Nikula

Dear supporters,

We are pleased to share some updates about our work in Finland.

We have had an eventful start in the year 2016!  On the 11^th of February the Finnish Blue Ribbon held a seminar for over 100 social and health care professionals in Helsinki to promote awareness and provide information about aging and substances. During the seminar we handed out more than 200 leaflets about aging, alcohol and drugs that were published in November 2015. What is important to mention is that we have emphasized the importance of being aware of unintentional effects accompanying combined use of alcohol and drugs. Alcohol and medications may boost or decrease each other’s effects. As we age, the metabolism of the medicines in the system may slow down. It is therefore important to check with a doctor how compatible one’s medications are with alcohol, so that unintentional combined use and adverse effects can be avoided.

In other news, the Finnish Blue Ribbon trained 25 home care workers in Savonlinna, eastern Finland, on February the 15^th. The goal of the training was to learn about age-related substance abuse work, ethical questions, human dignity and self-determination of the elderly suffering from substance abuse. In addition, the peer support groups (16 altogether) have continued meeting once a week in Helsinki (southern Finland), Turku (southwesterly Finland) and Rauma (western Finland). Our goal is to spread the peer support groups more widely around the country this year.

Finally, the team of the Blue Ribbon is starting a new training tour in six cities around Finland to spread the idea and knowledge about substance abuse work among the elderly, aging and substances as well as present the peer support group as a meaningful and involvement increasing way of substance abuse work.

To learn more about the work of the Finnish Blue Ribbon, please follow them on twitter: @IPTSininauha

A warm thank you for your continued support!