Assessing Frailty in Older Adults With Functional Mental Illness

Consenting participants will be invited to attend up to four meetings concerning the design of the specialist tool to assess frailty in older adults with a diagnosis of functional mental illness. The meetings will be small with up to three participants and the Chief Investigator present. The Chief Investigator will present the group with plans and ideas for the proposed assessment tool and facilitate discussions relating to these ideas. Participants will be encouraged to share their opinions and any ideas they may have. The chief investigator will take written meeting minutes during each session, which will be checked and agreed on by all meeting attendees. Each meeting will last no more than 90 minutes.

Consenting participants will engage in a one off assessment session where the newly devised specialist tool to assess frailty in older adults with a diagnosis of functional mental illness will be administered. Participants will be asked a series of verbal questions related to frailty indicators and asked to engage in basic observational tests of walking speed and both static and dynamic balance. Qualitative data will be gathered from the participant to establish the comprehensibility, relevance, acceptability and feasibility of the tool via a questionnaire that includes both Likert scales and open ended questions. To assess the comprehensibility of the tool's questions each participant will also be asked to rephrase a subset of the tools questions. The duration of the assessment session will be 90 minutes maximum.

Consenting participants will engage in a one off assessment session where the revised specialist tool to assess frailty in older adults with a diagnosis of functional mental illness will be administered. The administration of the tool will follow the same process as in pilot test 1. Participants will then be asked to complete a further self-rated frailty assessment tool: the Tilburg Frailty Indicator. Again, following the administration of the tools, qualitative data will be gathered from the participant to establish the comprehensibility, relevance, acceptability and feasibility of the revised tool as per the methods in pilot test 1. The tool will be scored by a study researcher and the study's chief investigator at the same time to assess inter-rater reliability. The duration of the assessment session will be 90 minutes maximum.