Clergy as mental health service providers to older adults

Abstract

Older adults tend to seek help for emotional problems from clergy at greater rates than they do from other sources. However, their help-seeking from clergy is largely understudied. We used data from the Naturally Occurring Retirement Community (NORC) Demonstration Project to examine older adults’ patterns of help-seeking from clergy. We studied a sample of adults aged 65 or older (n = 317) to determine which factors were related to help-seeking from a religious leader. This study was framed within the Behavioral Model of Health Services Utilization. Results of hierarchical logistic regression analyses indicated that having less social support and greater frequency of attendance at religious services was related to help-seeking from clergy for this sample, while other predisposing, enabling, need and religiosity variables were not found to be related to help-seeking from clergy. Discussion focuses on the need for mental health workers to be aware of the important role that clergy play in service provision and to find ways to leverage knowledge and skills to enhance provider–clergy relationships in order to improve services that older adults receive.

Keywords:

• clergy
• help-seeking
• mental health services
• NORC
• older adults
• religion

Acknowledgements

The larger project, of which this study is only a small part, was funded by the Administration on Aging (90AM2612) and the State of Missouri in grants to the Jewish Federation of St Louis, by the Harvey A. and Dorismae Friedman Research Fund at Washington University in St Louis, and by the Washington University Center for Aging (WUCFA). The WUCFA study team, led by John C. Morris, MD, included Brian D. Carpenter, Dorothy Edwards, Nancy Morrow-Howell, Peggy S. Neufeld, Janice L. Palmer, Margaret A. Perkinson and Susan Stark. This project was completed in partnership with the Jewish Federation of St Louis under the direction of Dr Stephen Cohen and Karen Berry Elbert. Additionally, this project was made possible by support from the John A. Hartford Foundation in the form of a Hartford Doctoral Fellowship to the first author. Many thanks are owed to Washington University in Saint Louis graduate students who performed a substantial number of the interviews and to study participants for their time and willingness to participate in this study.