Study will examine pandemic’s effects on mental health of Newton’s elderly – The Boston Globe

Leslie Mandel, the director of Undergraduate Public Health at Regis College, said the study is ultimately a chance to help elderly members of the community.

The real rationale is that this is a needs assessment, she said. Whatever we learn is going to be fed back into Newton, so they can better serve them not only now, but in the future.

The goal is to understand the impact of an intervention that both increases and encourages social contact and to build capacity for the Newton Senior Center to better serve vulnerable older adults during future crises, according to the abstract, as well as to assess how the elderly population in Newton is coping with the pandemic.

Nostrand said she is conducting the study with the help of four Regis undergraduate public health students, and Mandel said she is currently funding the project.

The study is divided into two parts. First, they sent surveys Oct. 23 to 300 elderly Newton residents. Then, based on responses to the surveys, a number of respondents will receive weekly, social phone calls from Norstrands team of public health students for up to five months. Nortstrand said she hopes thats enough time to provide a more nuanced look at how the older population in Newton is doing.

Whats unique about it is itll give us much more of a longitudinal sense of how people are coping, Norstrand said. The extent that the literature out there, in terms of the pandemic, has been able to assess is more a snapshot picture of whats happening right here and now.

Both Norstrand and Mandel were eager to stress that this is a pilot assessment a small scale study meant to evaluate feasibility for a similar but larger study.

It is a very small study, Norstrand said. Were probably not going to get huge data results, but well hopefully get trends.

The study will also examine roles of race, age, and gender, according to the abstract, and it will take into account living conditions.

Were certainly hoping that the Newton Senior Center can use the results from these surveys, in the sense that they will find out better what kind of needs people have, Norstrand said.

Jayne Colino, director of the Newton Department of Senior Services, said in 26 percent of all Newton households with someone over the age of 60, they are living alone. The weekly social calls through the study would be one of many initiatives to try and prevent Newtons elderly population from suffering from social isolation.

The Department of Senior Services in Newton has received multiple grants from the federal government to expand and improve social and food services during the pandemic, Colino said.

Colino said shes not expecting any particularly surprising results from the study, but she is looking forward to seeing how Newtons elderly community is coping with the pandemic.

I think older adults can extrapolate some of their survival mechanisms from earlier crises that some of us dont have in our tool bag, she said. Im going to be kind of looking for that kind of resilience thats out there amongst the older adult population.

Armand Manoukian can be reached at newtonreport@globe.com.

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Study will examine pandemic's effects on mental health of Newton's elderly - The Boston Globe