Mental health, well-being and organisational culture within residential aged care
The Swinburne Wellbeing Clinic for Older Adults presents an exciting series of seminars featuring guest presenters who are experts in the field of mental health and ageing to cover issues relating to late life conditions and treatments. In the next seminar, Marita McCabe will present a lecture titled “Mental health, well-being and organisational culture within residential aged care.
This presentation will report on the research that myself and our team have conducted over the past 20 years with older people and staff members is residential aged care facilities (RACFs). This research has been funded by beyondblue, NHMRC, ARC as well as other research funding bodies. The research commenced with a study to determine the incidence of depression in RACFs. We then developed a program to assist staff to better detect and manage depression, followed by a study to determine if this training program actually improved the levels of depression in RACFs that received the training. Our next series of studies developed, implemented and evaluated a protocol to manage behavioural and psychological symptoms associated with dementia (BPSD). Finally, over the past five years, we have been implementing and evaluating the effectiveness of a consumer directed care model of care from the perspective of the resident, staff member, organisation, as well as the economic viability of such a model of care. Overarching organisational issues to address with all of these studies will be discussed, along with factors to consider when working with RACFs.
About the Presenter
Professor Marita McCabe is Team Leader for the Health and Ageing Research Group at Swinburne University. Professor McCabe has published more than 400 refereed articles. In the last 10 years, her research has attracted more than $12 million in Category One funding. She is a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society and of the Clinical and Health Colleges of the APS. Professor McCabe established the Masters and the DPsych in Clinical Psychology at Deakin University.
Professor McCabe is currently leading a NHMRC-funded project to train staff to implement consumer-directed care (CDC) in residential aged care facilities. The CDC program is designed to improve the levels of choice, control and the quality of life for residents in residential care, as well as for staff members working at these facilities. She is also second author on a NHMRC and an ARC grant in the area of ageing research.