RSS 1.0Psychiatry Information in Brief
ABOUT THIS COLLECTION
Psychiatry Information in Brief (ISSN 2162-1950) is a journal devoted to the dissemination of behavioral health information. This journal focuses on translating research findings into concise, user-friendly information that is accessible to all. It is produced by the Implementation Science and Practice Advances Research Center (iSPARC) in the Department of Psychiatry at UMass Chan Medical School in Worcester, MA, USA. Read more about Psychiatry Information in Brief
QUESTIONS?
Contact Marsha Langer Ellison, UMass Chan Psychiatry - Implementation Science and Practice Advances Research Center, Marsha.Ellison@umassmed.edu with your questions.
Recently Published
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Charting the Course to Meaningful Community-Academic Research Partnerships: A roadmap and tools to advance heath equity through community partnership on Patient Centered Outcomes Research /Comparative Effectiveness Research (PCOR/CER) StudiesRecent calls to advance pathways towards health equity highlight the need for greater investment in multi-sectoral and community partnerships. Efforts to advance health equity research require meaningful participation of individuals and communities underrepresented in research partnerships. Meaningful participation provides a foundation critical for creating and sustaining the structural changes required to advance health equity. Accordingly, this Roadmap provides an overview of tools that aim to promote the meaningful engagement of individuals underrepresented in research partnerships.
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Accommodations at Work: What Do I Need to Know?Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, people with disabilities have a right to accommodations if their condition gets in the way of doing what’s called “the essential functions of a job.” Disabilities can include a mental health condition. If you have a disability, accommodations may help you perform the essential functions of the job. You still must do those basic tasks, but “how” you do them may be different with the help of an accommodation. This tip sheet explains what accommodations are, who they apply to and provides examples of workplace accommodations that could be helpful for young adults, and others, with serious mental health conditions.
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Adulting Shorts: The "TEA" on IEPs Part 4This info-comic is for high school students to help them understand what an Individualized Educational Plan or IEP is, what transition planning is, and the importance of the student being involved in them. Part 4 focuses on Mateo leading his IEP meeting. Parts 1 through 3 can be found on our website: https://www.umassmed.edu/TransitionsACR/publication/comic/
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Adulting Shorts: Passport to Adulting - Managing Your PaperworkThis info-comic is for youth and young adults with serious mental health conditions with tips about keeping and protecting important personal records and information. A tip sheet of this publication is also available for download https://doi.org/10.7191/pib.1062
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Resources for Addressing Food Insecurity and Other Social Determinants of Health in Worcester, MassachusettsSocial determinants of health (SDOH) are the environmental, social, and economic factors that can impact people’s quality of life and health. Examples of SDOH are where people live, the environment they live in, their employment and/or education, their socioeconomic status, and access to resources and basic needs such as food. Food insecurity is the lack of consistent access to enough affordable and nutritional food for every person in a household to live an active and healthy life. Food insecurity is a pressing issue in many areas including Central Massachusetts. Many communities and populations have experienced food insecurity, and these groups were especially affected during the COVID-19 pandemic. Challenges with food insecurity have also adversely affected people of color. This tip sheet is a list of resources available in the Worcester community to help families and community partners navigate local and state resources to address food insecurity and other social determinants of health.
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Applying for a Job: The Young Adults Guide, Revised 2023 [English and Spanish versions]This is a tip sheet for youth and young adults with serious mental health conditions about finding, applying for, and interviewing for jobs. This tip sheet was originally published in 2011. It has been updated for 2023.
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Factors that Influence the Continuous Pursuit of Education, Training, and Employment among Young Adults with Serious Mental Health ConditionsYoung adults (ages 18–30) with serious mental health conditions (SMHC) often face challenges in their education, training, and employment pursuits. The study presented in this brief study describes young adult patterns of education, training, and employment activities for individuals with SMHC in the United States and identifies modifiable factors that hinder or facilitate their ability to consistently pursue these activities. Based on first-person narratives from young adults (ages 25–30) with SMHC, these findings should inform psychiatric rehabilitation efforts that support the school, training, and work activities of young adults with SMHC to improve their long-term career trajectories. To learn more about this research project and find additional materials please visit our website: https://www.umassmed.edu/TransitionsACR/research/projects-by-grant/rtc/careerdevSMHC/
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My “Must Have” Papers [English and Spanish versions]2023-03-10Tip sheet for youth and young adults with serious mental health conditions with tips about keeping and protecting important personal records and information. A Spanish translation of this publication is available for download. Originally published as a: Transitions RTC Northeast Massachusetts Community of Practice Tip Sheet, 2011.
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Why and How Electronic Job Coaches Improve Employment for People with DisabilitiesEven though the 2014 Workforce Innovation and Opportunities Act strengthens federal and state commitments to employing people with disabilities, there remain millions of Americans with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities (ID) who are still unemployed. To succeed in competitive employment, workers with ID require help with memory, task sequence and planning, and time management; skills that are often referred to as executive functioning. Typically, employers do not have the training to manage people with ID with these challenges. This task falls to job coaches, job developers or employment specialists (e.g., providers) and the agencies that provide such services. Without effective and efficient tools to support the executive functioning of individuals with ID, policies that aim to affect their competitive integrated employment can result in an unmanageable burden on the provider. Today’s jobs are more complex. Providers need tools that can help them effectively and efficiently build, record and adjust prompts and instructions as changes occur in real-time. However, they may not have the time and/or the skills required to make clear, accurate instructional prompts for multiple workers with ID in different settings. To identify the needs of employers, providers, and workers with ID, a NIDILRR-funded project collected data from supervisors, employers and providers of employment services to workers with ID. These interviews were used to determine the requirements of an ideal system that would help them better instruct, coach, track progress and manage teams of employees with ID. This brief describes their findings and development of a cloud-based interactive electronic job coaching app that allows emplyment services providers to efficiently convert work assignments into the essential details required by the mobile worker with ID, and then wirelessly transfer the appropriate instructions to the worker’s electronic coach.
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Adulting Shorts: The "TEA" on IEPs Part 3This info-comic is for high school students to help them understand what an Individualized Educational Plan or IEP is, what transition planning is, and the importance of the student being involved in them. Part 3 focuses on Mateo creating a career goal and steps to reach it. Parts 1 and 2 can be found on our website: https://www.umassmed.edu/TransitionsACR/publication/comic/
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3 Tips to Improve Communication with Your Youth & Young AdultsThis tip sheet provides parents and allies of youth and young adults with lived experience of a mental health condition tips be able to improve their connection with them. This tip sheet was developed as a collaboration between the family member and young adult advisory boards that work with the Transitions to Adulthood Center for Research. The tips are based on advisory board members’ real experiences.
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Lost in Transition: The Journey from Pediatric to Adult Care for Youth with Mental Health ConditionsNearly one out of three (30.6%) young adults (18–25 years) experience mental illness (NIMH). In the United States suicide is the third leading cause of death for young people. Transition age youth (16–25 years) with mental health conditions such as mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and psychotic disorders, experience substantial adversity during the shift from pediatric to adult health care. Research by our team has shown that youth with mental health conditions utilize less outpatient care as they emerge into adulthood. These results echo the American Psychiatric Association position statement that transition age youth are “underserved in current mental health systems”. Understanding provider perspectives to caring for this unique patient population may help to increase health care utilization and quality of care for transition age youth with mental health conditions. This product offers providers real-world tips on what they can do to help and advocate for based on our work.
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Tips to Help People Living with Mental Health Conditions Stop Using Tobacco ProductsApproximately fifty million people living in the U.S. use tobacco products. According to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the leading cause of preventable death and disease in the state is smoking. As of 2017, 13.7% of Massachusetts adults were current smokers, with 13.5% of white adults, 15.7% of Black adults, and 18.3% of Hispanic adults reporting smoking cigarettes.1 One study found that an average smoker may attempt to quit 30 or more times before success is achieved with abstinence from smoking for at least one year. This tip sheet provides general and evidence-based tips on how to help individuals living with mental health conditions cease using tobacco products.
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Adulting Shorts: The “TEA” on IEPs Part 2This info-comic is for high school students to help them understand what an Individualized Educational Plan or IEP is, what transition planning is, and the importance of the student being involved in them. This is Part 2 of the story. Find Part 1 here: https://www.umassmed.edu/TransitionsACR/publication/comic/2021/09/tea-on-ieps-part-1/
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The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Clubhouse ModelThe COVID-19 pandemic posed challenges to the traditional Clubhouse Model of Psychosocial Rehabilitation (Clubhouse). The COVID-19 pandemic forced many Clubhouses around the world to rapidly pivot from face-to-face services and support programs at the Clubhouse to hybrid or virtual services. The Clubhouse community quickly mobilized to establish new structures to maintain connections with Clubhouse members and provide them with essential supports. This brief describes adaptations that Clubhouses made during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also describe supports offered by Clubhouse International to inform their international network about innovative approaches and best practices for Clubhouses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Advancing Employment for Secondary Learners with Disabilities through CTE Policy and PracticeThe Data tables for the figures in Advancing Employment for Secondary Learners with Disabilities through CTE Policy and Practice brief are available to download under "Additional Files" below. The Strengthening Career and Technical Education (CTE) for the 21st Century Act (Perkins V, P.L. 115-224) provides new opportunities for states to serve learners with disabilities in CTE. Perkins V specifies that learners with special population status, including learners with disabilities, need to be prepared for high-wage, high-skill, in-demand employment opportunities or post-secondary education. Perkins V requires state and local leaders to describe how CTE will be made available to learners with special population status and provides flexible funding and policy levers to achieve that goal. Even though Perkins V is in the early stages of implementation (the law went into full effect on July 1, 2020), states can leverage facets of the new law to address the challenges of supporting CTE access and success among learners with disabilities. Perkins V emphasizes supporting learners with special population status, giving states an opportunity to: Build upon prior equity work to provide greater access to CTE among learners with disabilities. To restructure systems and policies to better support these learners. To explore how this opportunity has been used by states in their Perkin V plans, UMass Chan Medical School partnered with Advance CTE to survey State CTE Directors for secondary education. This brief summarizes survey results, provides state examples, and offers policy and programmatic considerations.
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Creating Welcoming Environments for Workers with Disabilities: Managing Cognitive DemandThis comic is a collaboration between CeKTER and the Temple University Rehabilitation Research and Training Center on Community Living and Participation of Individuals with Psychiatric Disabilities (ACL grant #’s 90RTCP0001 & # 90RT5021). It is based on work by Gretchen Snethen, PhD, CTRS and colleagues. The comic shows and example of how workers with disabilities can be supported at work. A transcript of the comic is available at https://www.umassmed.edu/globalassets/cekter/docs/transcripts/managing-cognitive-demand-transcript.html. A .png version of the comic is available for download.
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How to Share Research about Education and Employment with the Deaf CommunityThe U.S. Deaf community is a sociolinguistic minority group of at least 500,000 individuals who communicate using American Sign Language (ASL).1 ASL is fully distinct from English – i.e., it is not “English on the hands.” ASL is a natural, formal language with its own syntax, morphology, and structure. Members of the Deaf community identify as members of a cultural minority group with shared language, experience, history, art, and literature. This tip sheet focuses on best practices for sharing research findings with culturally Deaf individuals who primarily use ASL. However, many of the strategies described below align with principles for universal accessibility and will, therefore, apply to a diverse range of hearing people and people with hearing loss.
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Perinatal Mental Health Research Topics and Barriers and Facilitators to Research Participation [Journey Maps]The Journey Maps: Developed by the Postpartum Support International Best Practice Committee for Perinatal Mental Health Equity, the journey map provides a graphic recording of the dynamic conversations that unfolded when the Committee members were asked: "What research topics should be prioritized to advance perinatal mental health equity? (Map 1) and "What barriers and facilitators exist to partner and participate in research to advance perinatal mental health equity?” (Map 2)
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Perinatal Mental Health Equity Research Topics [Journey Map]The Journey Map: Developed by the Lifeline for Moms Individuals with Lived Expertise Advisory Council, the journey map provides a graphic recording of the dynamic conversations that unfolded when Council members were asked: "What research topics should be prioritized to advance perinatal mental health equity?"
