Read the full article by Lizeth Tello at Sacramento News & Review
For Susan Kane, a former participant of ACC Senior Services’ PEARLS program, mental health is especially important to her as an older adult.
“As an elder, my mental health is more important to me than it ever was before. I want to be as positive and as productive as I possibly can be. If my thinking is not good, the rest of me is not good,” Kane said about her experience as reported by ABC 10 in 2024.
PEARLS, which stands for the Program to Encourage Active, Rewarding Lives, was first implemented by Sacramento nonprofit ACC Senior Services in July 2023, though its first participants weren’t enrolled until November 2023. The program is free and consists of one-on-one life coaching that helps older adults improve their quality of life.
For PEARLS in California funded through the Older Adults Grant from the Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission (MHSOAC), the program’s funding is set to end in June.
PEARLS was originally developed and facilitated by the University of Washington in the early 2000s. The university conducted a study from 2000 to 2003 to test the program’s effectiveness in treating depression.
It found that participants with clinically significant depressive symptoms were more likely to experience a 50% or more decrease of those symptoms on average after participating in PEARLS.