Professional Consultation with Geriatric Mental Health Experts

Dr. Regina Koepp and Dr. Lisa Frank provide expert consultation

What if you had experts to guide you in treating older adults?

With older adults being the fastest growing age group, you’ll be treating more older adults in your clinics than ever before. Our consultative services will help your agency meet the mental health needs of older adults by using evidence-based, ethical, and culturally informed care methods.

• Mental Health Consultation. There are more older adults who need mental health care than professionals trained to provide mental health care. Thus, you may find yourself in need of geriatric mental health consultation. We help care teams navigate clinical dilemmas, comorbid medical and mental health conditions, complex family dynamics, psychotherapy in the context of illness and dementia, adjustment to traumatic and life altering medical conditions, and geriatric psychopharmacology.
• Sexual Expression in the Context of Dementia Consultation. Sexual self-expression is a fundamental human right, even in the context of dementia. There are, however, complexities that come with sexual expression when there is diminished capacity. We help agencies navigate dilemmas related to dementia and sexuality, sexual decision making capacity, and sexual expression in long-term care communities.

• Mental Health for Older Adults
  20% of older adults have a mental health condition. Our presentations address common mental health concerns among older adults, including depression, anxiety, suicide, sleep disorders, and family dynamics. Presentations also include ways in which ageism affects the physical and mental health of older adults and the role resilience plays in older adulthood.
  
• Family Dynamics
  Mental health and dementia disorders affect the whole family. Including family in care is often essential to ensuring effective mental health care for older adults. We provide training on working with older families living with mental health and dementia disorders, understanding family dynamics and role changes, tools for having difficult conversations, and processing grief, including ambiguous loss and anticipatory grief (i.e., the difficult balance of honoring the person living with mental illness or dementia while simultaneously grieving tangible losses).
• Dementia & Sexuality for Senior Living Communities
  People with dementia experience a decline in functioning, but often maintain a need for intimate connection. Our presentations review risks and benefits of intimacy, complicating factors related to emotion regulation, impulsivity, capacity to consent to intimacy, and the role values play when determining “appropriateness” of intimate connections. Presentations also include cultivating connection between couples affected by dementia, guidelines for determining capacity to consent to intimacy, and a framework for developing sexual health policies for long-term care communities. Our presentations value and are inclusive of sexual and gender identity.
• Dementia Care for Primary Care & Mental Health Clinics
  We help mental health and primary care clinics identify and work with dementia disorders. We provide training on providing psychotherapy to older adults living with dementia and their families and help professionals gain confidence in understanding how mental health and dementia are different and where they overlap. We guide medical providers in necessary labs and medical and mental health rule outs, and provide professionals with tools to educate older adults and their families living with dementia.
• Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
  Older adults are incredibly diverse with respect to ethnicity and race, sexual orientation, gender identity, socio-economic status, ability, immigration status, etc. We value diversity and are proud to offer training on deepening a practice of cultural humility in working with older adults and their families as well as training on providing multiculturally supervision.