Isolating together during COVID-19: Results from the Telehealth Intervention Program for older adults.

Background: A pressing challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond is to provide accessible and scalable mental health support to isolated older adults in the community. The Telehealth Intervention Program for Older Adults (TIP-OA) is a large-scale, volunteer-based, friendly telephone support program designed to address this unmet need.
Methods: A prospective cohort study of 112 TIP-OA participants aged ≥60 years old was conducted in Quebec, Canada (October 2020-June 2021). The intervention consisted of weekly friendly phone calls from trained volunteers. The primary outcome measures included changes in scores of stress, depression, anxiety, and fear surrounding COVID-19, assessed at baseline, 4 and 8-weeks. Additional subgroup analyses were performed with participants with higher baseline scores.
Results: The subgroup of participants with higher baseline depression scores (PHQ9 ≥10) had significant improvements in depression scores over the 8-week period measured [mean change score = -2.27 (±4.76), 95%CI (-3.719, -0.827), p = 0.003]. Similarly, participants with higher baseline anxiety scores (GAD7 ≥10) had an improvement over the same period, which, approached significance ( p = 0.06). Moreover, despite peaks in the pandemic and related stressors, our study found no significant ( p ≥ 0.09) increase in stress, depression, anxiety or fear of COVID-19 scores.
Discussion: This scalable, volunteer-based, friendly telephone intervention program was associated with decreased scores of depression and anxiety in older adults who reported higher scores at baseline (PHQ 9 ≥10 and GAD7 ≥10).
Competing Interests: Author SR receives a salary award from the Fonds de Recherche de Québec-Santé (FRQS), is a steering committee member for AbbVie, and is a shareholder of Aifred Health. HS has a CIHR fellowship award, MITACS fellowship award, and AGE-WELL award. Author EM receives salary support from the Fond de recherche Santé Québec. Author SK has received research support from Brain and Behavior Foundation, National institute on Aging, BrightFocus Foundation, Brain Canada, Canadian Institute of Health Research, Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging, Centre for Ageing and Brain Health Innovation, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, an Academic Scholars Award from the Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, and Equipment support from Soterix Medical. Author SBo receives funds from the Canada research Chairs program and various provincial and federal granting agencies. He is president of, and owns equity in, Cliniques et Development In Virtuo; a company that distributes virtual reality environments. Conflicts of interest are managed under UQO's conflicts of interest policy. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
(Copyright © 2022 Sekhon, Lavin, Vacaflor, Rigas, Cinalioglu, Su, Bodenstein, Dikaios, Goodman, Raymond, Ibrahim, Bein, Gruber, Se, Sasi, Walsh, Nazar, Hanganu, Berkani, Royal, Schiavetto, Looper, Launay, McDonald, Seitz, Kumar, Beauchet, Khoury, Bouchard, Battistini, Fallavollita, Miresco, Bruneau, Vahia, Bukhari and Rej.)