Social Workers as Research Psychotherapists in an Investigation of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy among Rural Older Adults.

A large proportion of service providers in our country are social workers. The use of social workers as mental health therapists however, has not been adequately evaluated in the literature. This aim of this study was to evaluate a sample of clinically trained, masters-level social workers in their delivery of in-home Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to a group of primarily rural, medically frail older adults. The social workers in this study received extensive didactic and experiential CBT training. Audio-taped sessions were randomly selected and evaluated independently. Results showed that the social workers adequately delivered CBT as measured by the Cognitive Therapy Scale (CTS). Older adult participants also evidenced pre-post treatment improvements suggesting that the social workers' delivery of CBT facilitated improvement. These results suggest that social workers can be viable providers of CBT in clinical and research settings.