With longevity and declining fertility rates, the population of older persons (60 years and above) is globally growing faster than the general population. The percentage of the elderly in India for example has been growing at an increasing rate in recent years and the trend is likely to continue in the coming decades. The share of population over the age of 60 years is projected to increase from 8 percent in 2015 to 19 percent in 2050. By the end of the century, the elderly will constitute nearly 34 percent of the total population in the country. In this book we aimed to identify trajectories of health and their associations with lifestyle factors in a nationally representative cohort study of middle-aged and older Indians. We discuss self-rated health status, age discrimination, major injuries, recurrent falls, perceived everyday discrimination, elder abuse, hypertension, diabetes, angina pectoris, stroke, arthritis, back pain or problems, oral health problems, cataract, edentulism, hearing loss, tobacco use, alcohol use, loneliness, health care discrimination, weight discrimination, religiosity and well-being. We hope that the findings may aid public policy and programmes for middle-aged and older adults in India.

This book provides an overview of health behaviour intervention priorities in LMICs. It covers the most important health risks or problems in LMICs including childhood and maternal under-nutrition, other diet-related risk factors and physical inactivity, sexual and reproductive health, addictive substances, road traffic injury and violence, common mental health risk, parasitic infections and environmental risks. For all these health risks, health behaviour interventions are comprehensively described, with application to LMICs.

Psychological distress is a set of painful mental and physical symptoms that are associated with normal fluctuations of mood. In some cases, however, psychological distress may indicate the beginning of major depressive disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, somatisation disorder, or a variety of other clinical conditions. In this book, the prevalence and correlates of psychological distress, including issues in relation to bullying victimisation, poly-victimisation, obesogenic behaviour, ideal cardiovascular health behaviour, and HIV status, were studied in 19 countries. The results will inform researchers and readers of the relevance of school and youth mental health programs and related policies targeting psychological well-being in the adolescent population.

The vast majority of non-biomedical research on HIV/AIDS has been behavioural research, usually by survey methods, counting people's sex acts, partners, preferences, places, times and reasons for sex, and assessing levels of risk for HIV infection, revealing the dominance of seeing sex largely as behaviours. However, the notion of behaviours denudes sex of all meaning and pleasure. It neglects, as a result, how meaning and pleasure rely on context, how context exemplifies culture, and how culture is structured by history and discourse. When we drive our understanding of the epidemic by behaviours alone, we fail to comprehend that many of the social determinants of behaviour lie beyond the conscious apprehension of immediate acts and volitions, i.e. sexual behaviours are socially embedded practices. If we fail to understand the determinants of HIV risk and vulnerability as profoundly social- and by social is meant relational, contextual, cultural, political, economic, historical, symbolic and discursive- we fail to understand best how to intervene. Also, in such behavioural surveys, we are often concerned more with the sex of the sexual partner than the meaning of sex without a condom or an understanding of which circumstances within a sexual economy structure risk as, say, pleasure or intimacy, or social membership or an act of self-actualisation. Research undertaken in the mid-1990s among young people in seven developing countries revealed the importance of changing sexual meanings, sexual cultures and sexual identities in the patterns of sexual activity, forms of partnering, and meanings of sexual safety for young people within rapidly changing cultures.