Lydia Ogden

Lydia Ogden is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at Salem State University. Her research focuses on developing and evaluating interventions for vulnerable populations, particularly older adults with serious mental illnesses and community-based crisis response systems.

Education includes:

• PhD in Social Work
• MSW in Social Work

Her current research examines innovative approaches to enhance wellbeing among aging populations with mental health challenges, including psychosocial clubhouse models and VR-based training for crisis communication. She maintains active collaborations with public libraries to improve community support systems.

Publications demonstrate consistent focus on mental health interventions across the lifespan, with recent emphasis on technology-enhanced training methods and co-produced interventions with peer specialists. Key themes include implementation feasibility, acceptability studies, and cross-sector partnerships.

She teaches graduate courses on Human Behavior, Evidence-based Social Work, and Clinical Assessment. Her community-engaged work includes developing boundary-setting frameworks for library practitioners and examining public library-social work collaborations.