Session: Interventions for Youth and Young Adults with Serious Mental Health Conditions (Society for Social Work and Research 21st Annual Conference - Ensure Healthy Development for all Youth)

Background and Purpose: Youth living with serious mental health conditions are a distinct group with unique needs for public health intervention (IOM, 2014). During the “transition” years (ages 16-25) rates of mental disorders are high (Kessler et al., 2009) and service use is low (Copeland et al., 2015). Few psychosocial interventions are designed to address the unique developmental and cultural needs of our nation’s transition-age youth. This symposium highlights innovative interventions, while discussing cross-cutting challenges and achievements in intervention development for transition age youth. The symposium will inform intervention development researchers on current efforts to improve the mental health of transition age youth and present research on programs actively addressing our changing US mental health policy and practice landscape. Together these papers shed light on a critical time of intervention to ensure we meet the grand challenge of a healthy transition to adulthood for all youth.

Methods and Results: The symposium combines quantitative and qualitative research examining the development, refinement, and efficacy of interventions expressly designed for transition-age youth with serious mental health conditions.

The first paper, “Cornerstone: An Empirically-Supported Intervention for Transition-Age Youth with Mental Disorders” will describe the theoretical framework for Cornerstone, present qualitative results from the refinement of program protocols, and present preliminary results on mental health and functional outcomes from a small randomized clinical trial (N=40).

The second paper, “Integrating the Individual Placement and Support model of supported employment for transition-age youth in the Texas community mental health system” utilized qualitative methods with key stakeholders to discuss barriers and facilitators to the implementation of an adapted version of Individual Placement and Support model for young adults. Key barriers included challenges in marketing the model, securing administrative support, and securing funding, among others.

The third paper, “Adapting a Mental Health Engagement Intervention for Older Youth in Foster Care: JDY-OYFC” will present the process of modifying an existing intervention specifically for youth leaving the foster care system.  Adaptations included simplifying language and increasing content on building supports in the transition.  Feasibility testing highlighted significant challenges in conducting a group based intervention over multiple sessions within the foster care context. 

The fourth paper, “Multisystemic Therapy for Emerging Adults: Integrated care for Emerging Adults in the Justice System with Behavioral Health Conditions” will present the rationale for and nature of the adaptations to standard Multisystemic Therapy, pre-post outcomes from a feasibility trial (N=48), and baseline characteristics of those enrolled in a large randomized control trial that will begin August 2016.

Conclusions and Implications: Across studies, common themes emerged. Interventions universally focus on assisting transition-age youth with mental health conditions in developing supports, knowledge, and skills to making a successful transition to adulthood. Data collected from multiple stakeholders across multiple studies indicated that it’s important to bolster family involvement and enhance social supports. Feedback also indicated that language in the manuals for these interventions needs to be simple and avoid jargon. Another common theme was the importance of preparing adult-serving systems of care for with the unique needs of transition-age youth.