Patrick Raue
University of Washington, WA·Psychology
Depression among older adults who use senior centers often goes untreated, in part because there are too few mental health providers trained to work with older people. This project asks whether trained community volunteers can deliver an effective talk-based depression treatment, which would let senior centers draw on a workforce they already have.
- Fields
Psychology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
late-life depression
geriatric depression
older adults
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Nov 2026
What they work on
- Test whether the volunteer-delivered "Do More, Feel Better" program increases activity level and reduces depressive symptoms in adults over 60, compared with Behavioral Activation delivered by master's-level social workers, in a randomized trial at 18 senior centers.
- Test whether increases in daily activity predict greater reductions in depression severity, and whether activity's effect on depression is non-inferior when lay volunteers rather than professionals deliver the treatment.
- Evaluate the lay delivery model across economically and ethnically diverse senior centers in Seattle, New York City and Tampa, randomizing 288 clients with elevated depressive symptoms within center.
More about the research
The treatment is Behavioral Activation (BA), an approach that guides people back into daily activities they find pleasant or rewarding. Working with senior center partners, the team simplified BA so that lay volunteers can deliver it, a version called "Do More, Feel Better" (DMFB). This collaborative project proposes a fully powered randomized effectiveness trial comparing DMFB with BA delivered by professionals holding a Master of Social Work degree. It plans to enroll 288 adults over 60 with elevated depressive symptoms, without dementia or psychosis, from 18 senior centers across Seattle, New York City and Tampa that serve economically and ethnically diverse communities. Clients are randomized within each center, with two volunteers and two social workers per site providing the intervention. The trial measures whether overall activity level rises and whether depression symptoms fall, and tests whether increased activity predicts greater improvement in mood and whether that link holds equally well under volunteer delivery.
Why it matters
Many depressed older adults never receive care because geriatric mental health providers are scarce. If volunteer-delivered Behavioral Activation performs comparably to professional delivery, senior centers nationwide could use existing volunteers and supervision structures to treat depression, reaching a population that is underserved and hard to engage.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
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University of Texas at Arlington, TX·Public Health & Epidemiology
Train undergraduate social work students as certified Community Health Workers using EMPOWER, a digital platform teaching counseling skills and behavioral activation, to deliver brief interventions for depression and anxiety.
Ravi Parikh
Emory University, GA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test in a randomized trial whether A-PACT, machine learning risk prediction paired with lay health worker phone outreach, reduces hospitalizations and intensive end-of-life care for patients with cancer.
The school
University of Washington: 81 labs on PI Pages, $1.7B a year on research, 694 research doctorates a year.
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