Tackling Loneliness Amongst Seniors

Talking openly about mental health is not a cultural norm in many communities. For older people in particular, checking in on someone’s wellbeing—especially by asking “Are you OK?”—can feel unfamiliar, inappropriate, or even taboo. Many participants told us that asking about mental health in such a direct way was “not really common” in their culture. The challenge was to create content that respected these cultural nuances, avoided stigma, and engaged seniors in a safe and accessible way. We also needed to consider seniors with limited digital literacy or access to online content.

Ethnolink facilitated a co-design process involving seniors, their families, and community leaders to ensure all campaign materials were culturally relevant and age-appropriate. Guided by these consultations, we developed and refined video storyboards, scripts, infographics, and social media content across five languages. All content was translated and adapted with sensitivity to each community’s cultural context and communication preferences. Video emerged as the most preferred format across all language groups, so we prioritised this channel, incorporating multilingual voiceovers and clear, accessible visual storytelling.

Each asset went through multiple rounds of community feedback, ensuring the final outputs were not only linguistically accurate but also trusted and meaningful to the audiences they were designed for. The result was a suite of engaging, multilingual resources that sparked genuine conversations and supported R U OK?’s mission to build connection and reduce stigma among seniors from multicultural backgrounds.