The GO Program is a collaborative outreach service that brings mental health care to seniors who need it at home. GO Team members, under the directorship of Dr. Burton Reifler, are physicians, nurse practitioners and other health care professionals specializing in Geriatric Mental Health. In addition to clinical service, the GO Program assists patients and their families in accessing the many community resources available to our elderly population.
The GO Team is able to bring Mental Health Services to homebound elders thanks to a generous gift from the Snider Family in honor of Kate Mills Snider, after whom it is named. For eligibility and other information, Melissa Smith, Program Coordinator, can be reached at (336) 716-0690.
American Hospital Association Features a Story on the Geriatric Outreach Program
The website of the American Hospital Association has featured a story on the Geriatric Outreach Program, "Meeting the Mental Health Needs of the Elderly Homebound through a Geriatric Psychiatry Outreach Program Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center, Winston-Salem, NC." The article details the difficulties of many elderly patients getting to a health care setting to receive treatment due to frailty, disability, physical illness, or psychiatric illness. To meet the needs of these patients, Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center established an outreach program for the frail elderly who need psychiatric services in their homes." Read the story to see how the Geriatric Outreach Program helps to meet the needs of the homebound elderly.
AAGP to Award $10,000 to Geriatric Mental Health Outreach Services Program
The American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry (AAGP) has created a new AAGP Deirdre Johnston Award for Excellence and Innovation in Geriatric Mental Health Outreach Services to encourage programs to provide and/or expand services for meeting the mental health needs of the frail elderly in their homes. The association will grant $10,000 to a program based on its excellence and/or innovation in providing mental health services to older adults in the community.
This annual award is made possible by a generous gift from Arnold H. Snider to the Geriatric Mental Health Foundation, which with the association oversees the award. This award is named in honor of geriatric psychiatrist Deirdre Johnston, MBChB, MRCPsych, in gratitude for the care she provided to Kate Mills Snider, Mr. Snider’s mother. Mr. Snider and his wife, Katherine, have endowed the Kate Mills Snider Geropsychiatry Outreach Program and Professorship Fund within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center. View press release.