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VINE mental health program expands reach

Free Press - 1/17/2023

Jan. 17—MANKATO — A VINE mental health program expanded into a fourth area county this month, opening up access to more adults age 60 and older.

The Program to Encourage Active, Rewarding Lives, or PEARLS, launched for older residents in Blue Earth, Nicollet and Le Sueur counties in early 2021. It uses one-on-one sessions over the course of months to establish goal setting and identify life enrichment activities in older adults feeling symptoms of depression.

Knowing how underserved rural counties are when it comes to mental health programming, an expansion to Watonwan County is exciting, said PEARLS coach Glenda Becthold.

"It's being offered in a rural county and that's pretty cool," she said. "I'm talking to a lot of providers in St. James to get the ball rolling."

The program was initially funded through a Minnesota Department of Human Services grant. Funding from the Minnesota River Area Agency on Aging, or MNRAAA, now supports the program and enabled its expansion.

MNRAAA was happy to hear about VINE's interest in expanding the program, said Krista Eichhorst, MNRAAA's program development supervisor. Few areas of the state have such a program.

"PEARLS is one of the few evidence-based health promotion programs that focuses on adult mental health," she said. "It's really exciting that there's a provider that serves southwest Minnesota."

Participants, often people who haven't previously sought out mental health services, receive an assessment to start the program. The sessions serve as a way to track changes over time, with participants referred to treatment if needed.

From the start, Becthold said she works on problem solving with them. They look at barriers to their happiness and how to overcome them.

Activity planning is another key component to the program. If someone fell out of an activity they used to love doing, perhaps due to isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, the sessions are intentional about getting it back in their routines.

"We try to reintroduce things that they enjoyed before or have people try new things," Becthold said.

Care givers, people with chronic health conditions and people feeling isolated are all good fits for the program, she added. The program can be in-person or virtual, and interpreters are available for those who don't speak English as a first language.

More volunteer interpreters could help the program reach more people, Becthold said. As of early 2023, PEARLS has had about 50 graduates since it started.

Sessions cost $5 each. For more information on PEARLS, call 507-386-5571.

Follow Brian Arola @BrianArola

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