Paid for by Medicare: Why a “Normal” Depression Screen Can Still Miss What Many Older Adults Experience
Medicare is here for you.
Depression screening is common among Medicare members, but anxiety, sleep, pain, and functional distress often go unmeasured in older adults.
Growing older doesn’t have to mean giving up on feeling well. Anxiety, sleep problems, and stress are often overlooked. A simple mental-health check—paid for by Medicare—helps seniors stay active.”
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, UNITED STATES, February 3, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Millions of older adults receive routine mental health screenings each year and are told their results are “normal.” Yet many continue to experience anxiety, sleep problems, chronic pain, emotional distress, or difficulty managing daily activities—symptoms that are often not captured by depression-only questionnaires.— Gerald Hurowitz, M.D., CMO of M3
Clinicians and researchers have long noted that mental health in later life is rarely defined by a single condition. Anxiety disorders, trauma-related stress, mood changes, pain-related distress, and functional limitations frequently overlap. When screening focuses solely on depression, important aspects of an older adult’s lived experience may go unrecognized, even when individuals sense that something is still not right.
A new service initiative, MedicareMentalHealth.org, supported by Medicare, aims to address this gap by offering a brief, multidimensional mental health assessment for Medicare members. The private online assessment takes approximately three minutes to complete, is available at no cost, and provides immediate, easy-to-understand results.
Unlike traditional single-condition screening tools, the assessment evaluates multiple, overlapping areas of mental health together, including anxiety, trauma-related symptoms, mood patterns, sleep, pain-related distress, and daily functioning. The assessment model is evidence-based and has been published in the Annals of Family Medicine, supporting its clinical validity across diverse patient populations.
“Mental health in older adults is often more complex than a single score can reflect,” said Gerald Hurowitz, M.D. “When we measure only depression, we may miss the factors that are actually affecting daily functioning, resilience, and quality of life.”
The assessment is not intended to provide a diagnosis. Rather, it is designed to help individuals recognize patterns in their mental well-being and determine whether follow-up care is warranted. When additional support is appropriate, participants can contact mental health providers who accept Medicare, often with little or no out-of-pocket cost under Part B coverage.
Information about Medicare-covered mental-health services is available in the Medicare & You handbook at medicare.gov/medicare-and-you, or by calling 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227), available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (TTY: 1-877-486-2048).
The platform is securely hosted on Google Health Cloud. All responses are de-identified to protect individual privacy while supporting broader public-health insights.
By expanding mental health assessment beyond depression alone, MedicareMentalHealth.org helps older adults gain a clearer understanding of their mental well-being—grounded in clinical evidence and paid for by Medicare.
For more information, visit MedicareMentalHealth.org.
Michael Byer
M3 Information
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Dr. Gerald Hurowitz on MedicareMentalHealth
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