International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | November 2023 | Vol 10 | Issue 11 Page 4480 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Zaidi I et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2023 Nov;10(11):4480-4484 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Review Article Barriers to access healthcare among the elderly population in rural regions of India Ilham Zaidi 1,2 *, Twinkle Sharma 3 , Shikhar Chaudhary 1 , Ayesha Alam 4 , Sahifa Anjum 1 , Jagadeeswari Vardha 5 INTRODUCTION A mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by a clinically significant disturbance in an individual's thinking, emotion regulation, or behaviour that reflects a dysfunction of the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning and impairment in social, occupational, or other day-to-day activities. 1 Psychiatrists and mental health professionals use a wide variety of questionnaires, interviews, checklists, outcome assessments, and other tools to assess the plan of treatment, aid in the diagnosis, identify comorbidities and assess the level of functioning. It is challenging in the field of psychiatry, to classify the various mental disorder to assess the severity and quality of life, over the change of time. Rating is a term used to express an opinion or judgment regarding the performance of a person, object, situation, or character. ABSTRACT Aging care is critical. Hence, the best-known newly developed technologies must be provided to the older population. This paper explains the need for mapping of strategies that must address preventive and promotional care and sickness management, empowering geriatric services, and guaranteeing optimal rehabilitation for the elderly population of India. Databases considered to carry out the literature review was Scopus, PubMed and Web of Science. Scientific articles published in English were only considered. Apart from scientific articles, government report, and newspaper articles, were also reviewed. Data was managed in Mendeley software. Articles based on elderly residing in urban populations and other age groups were excluded from the study. There are multiple barriers between the elderly beneficiaries and the healthcare services which stop the utilization of healthcare services. It can be demographic, aging, geographic, economic, accessibility, psychological, housing, transportation, medical, and social. Financial security is the top reason for not availing of healthcare services, followed by the perception that the ailment is not serious enough. The second reason was the unavailability of accessible healthcare facilities. Therefore, elderly people residing in rural regions, are more prone to varying diseases and are vulnerable to health inequity among other age groups in India. Considering the projected demography, it will only get worse until there is an intervention and feasible infrastructure, healthcare facilities, and services are provided in collaboration with local stakeholders and program monitors. Keywords: Accessibility, Elderly, Geriatric, Psychological, Social 1 Department of Public Health, Achutha Menon Centre for Health Science Studies, Sre Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Trivandrum, Kerala, India 2 Vikas Anwesh Foundation, an initiative of Tata Trusts, Pune, Maharashtra, India 3 Department of Public Health, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Rishikesh, Uttarakhand, India 4 Department of Public Health, Indian Institute of Public Health, Delhi, India 5 Masters of Science Scholar in Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases and Antimicrobial Resistance, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom Received: 11 July 2023 Accepted: 24 September 2023 *Correspondence: Dr. Ilham Zaidi, E-mail: ilhamasgher@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20233498