Bringing Mental Health Services to Community Settings

Abstract

Senior centers and aging service providers provide national infrastructure for delivering mental health services to older adults in need. Given that older adults involved in senior centers, dining sites, and other aging services exhibit high mental health needs, this infrastructure shows great promise for preventing and ameliorating depression, anxiety, loneliness, and other mental health issues. This session describes three programs and evaluation results of behavioral health screening and interventions integrated into senior centers and aging service organizations, delivered by embedded mental health clinicians and older adult volunteers. The first presentation describes an ongoing three-site RCT of behavioral activation delivered by master's level clinicians or a streamlined behavioral activation intervention delivered by older adult volunteers for depressed senior center clients, describing the methods, interim training results, and preliminary feedback from clients and volunteers. The second presentation describes a large-scale dissemination initiative of mental health screening and services across 30 senior centers in New York City, involving 894 older adults screened and 4,749 intervention sessions delivered in one year by embedded mental health clinicians, with reductions in depressive and anxiety symptoms for many. The third presentation describes a pilot RCT with 40 depressed senior center clients, comparing a Stay Connected virtual intervention delivered during the COVID-19 pandemic to usual care, observing improvements in depressive symptoms for the Stay Connected intervention. The three programs illustrate the value of screening and evidence-based interventions delivered by embedded mental health clinicians, aging service personnel, and older adult volunteers. The discussant will review key findings and themes and facilitate discussion among the speakers and audience.