NEWS RELEASE – FEBRUARY 6, 2008

For more information, please contact: Rachael Watman, Program Officer (212) 832-7788 rachael.watman@jhartfound.org

NEW YORK CITY (January 1, 2008) – A collaborative project to improve the mental health care of older adults begins today with a grant made by the John A. Hartford Foundation to support the creation and dissemination of standard competencies and curricula in geropsychiatric nursing. About one in five older adults (7.5 million) currently have a diagnosable mental disorder and this number is expected to reach 15 million by 2030; yet most nurses, who represent the largest group of professionals caring for older patients, lack skills and knowledge about mental health needs. This project, designed to help improve the training of nurses in the care of depression, dementia and other mental health disorders, will be led by geropsychiatric nursing experts from three of the John A. Hartford Foundation Centers of Geriatric Nursing Excellence, with coordination being provided by the American Academy of Nursing.

The alarming numbers of older adults with mental disorders compelled the Surgeon General and a Presidential Commission to identify mental health of older adults as a critical public health issue for the 21st century. Studies indicate that older adults receive fewer mental health services than do persons in other age groups, due in part to under diagnosis, which results in increased disability and higher costs of care. However, nurses, who provide the bulk of health care for older adults in hospitals, homes, and long-term care settings, receive little training in mental health, and even less in geriatric mental health. Among psychiatric nurses, only 16 percent are prepared in the geropsychiatric subspecialty and only 20 percent of geriatric nurse practitioner programs include any geropsychiatric content.

A collaboration between Centers of Geriatric Nursing Excellence at the Universities of Arkansas, Iowa, and Pennsylvania and the American Academy of Nursing will establish a core set of geropsychiatric nursing competencies for all levels of nursing education that will articulate the essential knowledge and skills required by nurses to assure that high-quality mental health care is provided to older adults. These competencies, established by a working group representing major national nursing organizations, will be disseminated to all nursing schools nationwide. Building upon the competencies, curricula will be developed for basic, graduate, post-graduate, and continuing education nursing programs. Additionally, a Web site will be designed to make public the competencies and curricular materials, and two regional workshops will be convened to disseminate geropsychiatric curricular content to graduate nursing programs.

“Nurses are on the frontline of caring for our parents, grandparents, and ourselves as we age and face the increasing probability of decline in mental health,“ said Corinne Rieder, Executive Director of the John A. Hartford Foundation. “It is critical that we improve and increase the number of nurses trained in geriatric mental health best practices.” Since 1996, she noted, the Trustees of the John A. Hartford Foundation have invested more than $67 million in nursing initiatives to improve the care of older adults.

For more details on the John A. Hartford Foundation Geropsychiatric Nursing Collaborative, please contact Karen S. Fennell, MS, RN, Project Coordinator, American Academy of Nursing at 202-777-1167, kfennell@aannet.org

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