Improving Mental Health via Neurofeedback Program Expansion

Health care access

San Fernando Valley

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

ECDA focuses on the low-income consumers who are the most likely to experience barriers to accessing services, such as monolingual Spanish-speaking clients, severely and persistently mentally ill consumers, uninsured and/or undocumented consumers, foster children, and children and families with DCFS involvement. 100% of our clients are low-income. 78% of our clients are Latino.
LA County Department of Health’s most recent Key Indicators of Health report demonstrates that our target population experiences significant barriers in accessing primary and mental health care:
- 36.6% of those below the federal poverty level and 17.7% of those at 100% to 199% of the federal poverty level had trouble accessing medical care.
- Less than 50% of people in LA County with current depression are currently participating in mental health counseling.
- Only 56% of Latinos in LA County and only 46% of foreign-born Latinos reported always or usually receiving the social and emotional support they need.

We are always looking for ways to make high quality mental health care available to more people. To do this, in April 2024, we began offering neurofeedback, a type of biofeedback that reinforces healthy brain function, at two sites.
In mental health disorders, brain wave patterns can become disrupted, leading to psychiatric or neurological symptoms. Recent research has shown that when given proper support, the brain can change and adapt, a property known as neuroplasticity. Neurofeedback can encourage and speed up this process of neuroplasticity. Neurofeedback does not involve any electrical current or stimulation of the brain.
To date, the neurofeedback team has worked with individuals already receiving mental health services at ECDA, addressing issues such as depression, anxiety, ADHD, trauma, and adjustment problems. The typical course of treatment is 20 sessions once or twice a week. However, most clients see results in the first 5-10 sessions. The quick timeframe is a major factor in neurofeedback’s impact.
We want to expand neurofeedback services to the broader community, accepting referrals from outside our agency on a sliding scale basis. We also want to expand neurofeedback services to our Panorama City location, facilitating easier access to neurofeedback services for families receiving services at the nearby Panorama City DCFS office. Eventually, we want to offer neurofeedback services at the schools we serve, providing a convenient, accessible option for students.

In the short term, we want to make Neurofeedback accessible to more clients, better integrate neurofeedback into our existing services, educate clinicians inside and outside of ECDA about the benefits of neurofeedback, and conduct successful community outreach to raise awareness of neurofeedback services.
In the long term, we want to further expand this project until we can offer it as a stand-alone treatment for members of our community, including students at the thirteen schools where we currently provide on-site services. We also want to raise awareness in the broader community about the benefits of neurofeedback in addressing mental health issues.
One advantage of this project is that it is embedded in our broader services, so we can ensure that neurofeedback clients can access all the support they need, including rehabilitative services, housing, medical, medication management, social/recreational, pre-vocational, and educational referrals. We provide a free legal clinic as well.