Telephone-based group mental health support for older adults in central Canada: pilot acceptability and effectiveness findings of The CONNECT Program
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Though experiences of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and social isolation are prevalent among older adults, treatment access is limited. In central Canada, based on participatory program development methods, our team of researchers, clinical psychologists, and community experts have developed and piloted a novel 6-session telephone-based group intervention called The CONNECT Program, based on the principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), self-compassion, and psychosocial theories of successful aging. Methods: = 34 participants. We collected quantitative data at baseline and quantitative and qualitative data post-intervention by telephone. Findings: Overall, our program was deemed to be feasible and acceptable by participants. Pre- to post-CONNECT, we found significant improvements in depression (d = 2.4), emotional support (d = 5.2), mental health literacy (d = 3.2), and psychological flexibility (d = 7.0), indicating large treatment effects. Through conventional content analysis of post-CONNECT individual interviews we developed three main themes: Accessibility (sub-themes: join from the comfort and anonymity of the telephone lines; reduction of age-related barriers), Connectedness (sub-themes: connection to group facilitators; group members; and new information), and Perceived Program Benefits (sub-themes: behavioral changes; emotional and cognitive changes; enhanced mindful awareness). Discussion: The CONNECT Program is a novel, accessible, and acceptable intervention that demonstrates promise in improving key social and mental health indicators. The findings from this pilot study will inform a future trial comparing The CONNECT Program with standard community programs typically offered to older adults in these provinces. This trial will also evaluate two delivery modes (telephone and videoconferencing) to compare their relative impact and feasibility.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".