The Centre for Research in Wellbeing and Happiness (CRWBH) at FLAME University, Pune, will host its 1^st Annual Symposium on 10^th October 2025 (Friday) at VKS003, FLAME University, Pune, India. The symposium is envisaged to disseminate and reflect upon the centre’s research activities and way forward. The event brings together academicians, development practitioners, policymakers, industrialists, and domain experts for meaningful discussions and deliberations. The  theme for the 1^st CRWBH symposium is “Intervention Pathways to Wellbeing: Families, Communities, and the Lifecycle Approach”.

On the occasion of World Mental Health Day, the symposium features a plenary session on “Mental Health in Context: Families, Communities, and Social Structures”. The session aims to shed light on the rapid changes occurring in interpersonal relationships and their impact on the psychological wellbeing of persons of all ages, with a specific focus on young people. These include fragmented families, the impact of social media and technology, work-life imbalances and frenetic lifestyles, daily life stresses, rapidly shrinking quiet inner spaces and unravelling of close emotional bonds. Yet, there are redeeming factors too, which need to be discovered and used well. The session is expected to familiarise the listeners with current mental health scenarios as well as ongoing research and interventional efforts to ensure health and happiness.

We also bring to you a panel session on “A Lifecycle Approach to Wellbeing: Intervention Pathways” to discuss the findings from the formative assessment on elderly wellbeing in the Indian context. The session aims to explore the pathways of ground-level interventions to enhance societal wellbeing through a lifecycle lens, and reflect upon the complex interplay of objective and subjective wellbeing measures across different phases of life. The primary focus of the session would be to discuss the possibilities and feasibility of community-based interventions aimed at increasing the sense of volunteering, neighbourhood, and altruism among the elderly community as a potential pathway to improve their self-assessment of wellbeing. The panel will deliberate upon the potential intervention models that are scalable from a policy standpoint to address the subject at the population level.