www.positiveaging.org

Mission

To promote emotional wellness as the key to positive aging by providing information and resources to older adults and caregivers, health and social service professionals, and policy makers.

About PARC

The Positive Aging Resource Center (PARC) is part of an initiative of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Care Administration (SAMHSA) created to address the mental health of older adults by encouraging the spread of evidence-based practice in mental health care for the elderly. In addition, PARC consumer education aims to inform older adults about mental health, while encouraging a general feeling of positive aging and emotional wellness. PARC recognizes that older adults face a unique set of challenges as they age, and that an individual's emotional health is predictive of how they will cope with changes associated with aging.

Based in Boston at Boston at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, the Positive Aging Resource Center seeks to educate older adults, their families, and health care providers throughout the country. The Center collaborates with major national provider and consumer organizations serving the elderly to help achieve these goals.

Provider Education at PARC

PARC is dedicated to improving the quality of geriatric mental health services through provider education. To support providers of various health and social services, we provide continuing education, information, and resources that will help them effectively engage and manage mental health care for older adults, as well as implement sustainable service programs.

In collaboration with the Harvard Partners Geriatric Education Center and the American Society on Aging (ASA), PARC is currently offering new web-based courses for continuing education credit. These courses teach easy strategies to enhance patient care in a variety of health settings: primary care, aging and social service agencies, community pharmacies and nursing homes, while sharing innovative knowledge from the field of aging. The courses offered include:

• Late Life Depression
• Depression in the Elderly: Practical Problem-Solving Model for Non-Medical Providers
• Signs and symptoms of PTSD
• Service Models for Older Adults with Severe Mental Illness: Rehabilitation, Outreach, Residential Support, and Integrated Health Care
• Mental Health Specialty Model Programs
• Alzheimer's Disease: Taking Control
• Treating Late Life Depression with Psychotherapy

Model Service Programs

PARC provides technical assistance to nine SAMHSA-funded model service programs around the country that are committed to expanding their capacity and the quality of mental health services that they provide to their aging consumers.

Consumer Education at PARC

PARC consumer education emphasizes that good mental health is a vital aspect of positive aging, along with maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and staying connected to one's community.

PARC consumer education also addresses the complex needs of older adults by dealing with difficult issues such as grief, social isolation, and life changes that can contribute to anxiety, depression, alcoholism and gambling. By addressing mental health as a component of positive aging, mental health is normalized and the stigma surrounding it is reduced.

Visit PARC's website at www.positiveaging.org.