Support for Community Health Workers

With changes in programming, hours, and worksite location among others, we anticipate that community health workers regularly caring for individuals with serious mental illness have faced difficulties during the COVID-19 pandemic. In these times, burnout may be high. Self-care and care provided to patients may be impacted as a result. 

We are implementing group-based support sessions for community health workers caring for patients with mental illness. We hope to better understand the unique challenges you and your program may have faced so that we can improve health safety and quality of care in your work environment as this pandemic continues.

Participation in this research program will involve attending a weekly 90-minute group session for four consecutive weeks. Groups will be kept at a maximum of eight participants to keep the sessions more personalized. All sessions will be led by a UMass Psychiatry resident physician with possible collaboration from other UMass clinicians. In addition to the sessions, participants must complete a short survey at the start of the program and at the end so we can obtain information that will allow us to better understand the needs of our community and improve future sessions. All data will be kept anonymous.

If you are currently employed as a healthcare worker in the community and you work with patients with serious mental illness, you may be eligible to participate. Please contact our team by email or by phone if you are interested in participating.