Saturday, May 18, 2024
5/18/2024
Psychotic disorders constitute one of the most debilitating and costly classes of mental illness, associated with high cost of treatment and low quality of life and functioning. Multipronged prevention and education strategies that provide early intervention hold the promise of improving outcomes and reducing important clinical factors such as the time between illness and the initiation of appropriate care for this vulnerable group. Gold standard approaches for early psychosis suggest that outreach and education efforts for professionals, clinicians, and community members that lead to early intervention promote stigma reduction, reduce the duration of untreated psychosis, and improve clinical outcomes. This project intends to provide outreach to a diverse population of community members interfacing with youth in Maryland to facilitate the provision of psychoeducational training, sharing of resources and referral pathways, and training on crisis de-escalation techniques when working with youth experiencing early or attenuated psychosis. We propose to expand on existing activities within the Maryland Early Intervention Program (EIP) Outreach and Education initiative, led by our team at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in collaboration with the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM). Our proposal involves expanded efforts to 1) outreach to new stakeholder groups and to develop relationships with more community organizations, 2) develop new training materials and resources, 3) provide outreach and education training, and 4) refine current referral and resource connection procedures. Entitled Mental Health Awareness Training – Early Psychosis (MHAT-EP), aims include: 1) training community members (e.g., teachers and school personnel, parents and caregivers of youth experiencing early and attenuated psychosis, emergency first responders, law enforcement) to recognize the signs and symptoms of early and attenuated psychosis; 2) training community members listed above on crisis de-escalation techniques for youth experiencing acute distress or impairment; 3) establishing and enhancing existing linkages with schools and community-based behavioral health agencies and improving resources and information available to youth, family, and community members to facilitate effective and efficient referrals of individuals with early or attenuated psychosis to the appropriate services. We propose to address these aims by undertaking efforts to 1) expand and establish linkages with community organizations, agencies, and groups to facilitate outreach and education training of community members and organizations; 2) develop and improve training materials related to increasing awareness of the signs and symptoms of early and attenuated psychosis; 3) implement trainings through educational outreach to community members and organizations to increase awareness of the signs and symptoms of early and attenuated psychosis; and 4) evaluate and improve internal and external referral processing and coordination efforts to promote referral of youth with early or attenuated psychosis to the appropriate services.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).
