Mental health affects all demographics of people and the seniors in the Zanesville-Muskingum County area are no exception.

The Muskingum County Center for Seniors launched a new partnership with Allwell to better serve the people who visit the facility that may experience mental health issues.

“The senior population that we serve is often faced with many challenges that change life,” Ann Combs, Executive Director of the Center for Seniors, said. “Not only do those changes affect seniors physically, which is what we tend to see first, but it also affects them mentally.”

Combs noted that many times seniors who are faced with retirement life, a busy family, losing friends and potentially illnesses often experience depression and isolation.

In order to help combat those things, the Center for Seniors now has a part-time, certified counselor on staff to meet with and counsel the seniors that visit the facility.

“We partnered with Allwell for seniors to realize that, first of all, there is help available to them to make sure that they do have that availability to get that help and to have a quality of life,” Combs, who has been with the center for four years, said. “But also, to face the stigma, first off, seniors don’t like to talk about this thing.”

While mental health and wellness is a topic that is often brought to the forefront of conversations today, many seniors never experienced those conversations. With that in mind, part of the partnership with Allwell is not only to identify and counsel seniors in need but also to alleviate the stigmas associated with mental illness.

Peg Earhart is the Center’s new counselor. She began meeting with seniors in the facility on Wednesdays and Thursdays as of the first week of August. Combs said Earhart has had a steady flow of meetings with seniors since she started about two weeks ago.

Due to the positive start to the partnership, the center is hoping to expand its services into the in-home care sector of its services. The Center for Seniors provides roughly 500 to 600 in-home meals a day to home-bound seniors in the community. While targeting people in the center is important, Combs and her staff realize that they are serving a much larger population than the seniors that walk through the doors of the center.