Home-delivered mental health services for aged rural home health care recipients

Home health care programs are generally able to meet a wide variety of olde r persons' medical care needs, but are often unable to provide for the spec ialized needs of those patients who are experiencing emotional problems. Th is situation is most problematic in rural communities where services to mee t the mental health needs of homebound elders are often not available. This article reports the results of a study that tested the efficacy of providi ng home-delivered psychotherapy to 78 elderly patients of a rural home heal th can agency, patients who completed the brief task-centered psychotherape utic intervention reported improvements in their emotional well-being and i ndicated significant reduction of the problems associated with the target c omplaints that were the focus oft he interventive activities. These results suggest that home-delivered psychotherapeutic interventions may have an im portant role to play in treating the mental health problems of older rural, home health care recipients.