Blog: Adolescent Mental Health

Most people need to feel included -- for young people in recovery from alcohol and drug use or living with mental health issues, it's critical for them to feel that they can contribute to their communities. 
But how can your community promote this? Check out this free teleconference from SAMHSA's Resource Center to Promote Acceptance, Dignity and Social Inclusion Associated with Mental Health (ADS Center).  It will be held May 9, 2011, from 12pm-1:30pm PST / 3pm-4:30pm EST.
In the spotlight will be three innovative programs "that are improving lives, changing communities, and transforming systems through social inclusion practices." Here are the details, quoted from the press release:

• Legislative Victories Removing Youth from Adult Criminal Justice System
  The Campaign for Youth Justice released a report on the growing number of states changing their policies to keep more kids out of adult lockup.
• Hardin County, OH Embraces Reclaiming Futures
  Reclaiming Futures Hardin County got great coverage in the March 26, 2011 issue of the Kenton Times. Random quotes: Scott Mitchell, treatment court graduate, said, “I did a complete 180." Judge James Rapp: "If we are there for [the kids], they will be successful.” Follow the link to learn more.
• Do it YO Way - Mentors Guide Youth in Bristol County, MA
  After receiving training in anti-oppressive practices (follow link and scroll to find webinars, PowerPoints, and other resources), the Reclaiming Futures Bristol County team "developed 'YO', a pilot program which exposed seven young men from diverse ethnic backgrounds to the practices of oppressiveness and privilege."

  In an intense, 12-week program, they worked with adult mentors on "how to be successful in the face of the challenges they face in their daily lives."

  As Deirdre Lopes, director of the H.O.P.E. (Healthy Opportunities for Peaceful Engagement) Collaborative said, "We can tell them whatever we want, but there's no substitute for showing them. That's what really has an impact."

  Click the headline to see the April 5, 2011 story from South Coast Today.

A few weeks ago, my colleague, Jeff Butts, discussed here the implications of our recent study of rates of psychiatric disorder in almost 10,000 young persons at various levels of penetration of the justice system. (Here's the original study: "Psychiatric Disorder, Comorbidity, and Suicidal Behavior in Juvenile Justice Youth.")
He drew attention to our finding that, when evaluated in a standard way, approximately 35% of young persons at system entry (i.e., entering the juvenile justice system via probation or family court processing) met criteria for a mental health or substance use disorder.

In that work, we relied on a well-validated, computerized, instrument which aggregates a youth’s answers to specific questions about symptoms to generate a set of provisional psychiatric disorders (the DISC-IV). But what happens about identifying mental health problems in settings where such research activities are not in place?

Multidimensional Family Therapy (MDFT) is an evidence-based practice for working with adolescents struggling with substance abuse – the manual can be downloaded from SAMHSA for free. (SAMHSA is the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.) One of five treatment protocols developed and tested in the past decade by SAMHSA, it has been shown to be clinically and cost-effective.
As it happens, the creator of MDFT, Dr. Howard A. Liddle, Ed.D., will be doing a webinar for us on family engagement on April 30, 2011, at 11 am PST / 12 pm CST / 2 pm EST. You can learn more and register for it on our webinars page.
Dr. Liddle told me recently that there was an MDFT program operating in Portland, Oregon, where I live, so I set up an interview with Deena Corso, who is a clinical supervisor in the Juvenile Treatment Services unit at the Department of Community Justice (DCJ) in Multnomah County, Oregon. (Deena and I were co-workers when I was employed there between 2000 and 2007.)
 

Benjamin: What are the top reasons to implement MDFT?
Deena: We picked MDFT as our treatment model because it's an evidence-based practice, effective at reducing substance abuse and delinquent behavior for populations that looked like ours. We’d had a Multi-Systemic Therapy [MST] program for many years with good outcomes, but budget cuts forced us to look for an alternative, and once we looked at the research, we decided on MDFT. 

This just in: the final agenda/program for the Joint Meeting on Adolescent Treatment Effectiveness (JMATE) 2010 conference next week is out. 

• What presentations are you most excited about attending?
• If you can't be there, which ones do you most wish you could be there for?  What would be most useful for you in your work? 

• Helping Teens in Recovery Starts with a Simple Phone Call. The Science and Management of Addictions (SAMA) Foundation in Seattle is piloting a mentor-by-phone program that now supports 50 teens in recovery after completing substance abuse treatment. The pilot program, "The Recover2gether Project," offers weekly phone calls to teens and two other services. It's funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). 
• Also For Teens in Recovery: "Laughter Yoga." The idea is that laughter -- even fake laughter -- changes your breathing and mood in positive ways. Follow the link to watch teens in a sober high school in Oklahoma trying it out on video.   (Hat tip to the Association of Recovery Schools.)

•   How many youth are transferred from the juvenile justice system into the adult criminal justice system every year? No one knows. But the Bureau of Justice Statistics is initiating a study that should get us get closer to an answer to this an other questions about adult transfer practices. (Hat tip to Youth Today.)

• End the Byrne JAG formula grants? That's one of the Justice Policy Institute's (JPI) recommendations in a recent fact sheet on Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program spending. (JPI recommends replacing the formula grants with a competitive grant program focused on evidence-based programming.)

The JPI also recommended that juvenile justice funds be directed at "educational and community-based youth programming" and that substance abuse and mental health treatment services be funded through public health agencies, and not through the justice system: "By reaching people before they come in contact with the justice system, we can reduce future justice involvement and related costs, and reduce the chances that someone will have to deal with the collateral consequences of having a criminal record."

[The following checklist, which applies to both adult and adolescent substance abuse treatment, is reposted with permission of the author from his website, Selected Papers of William L. White. See below for attribution; slight edits have been made for ease of viewing and clarity (view the original here). -Ed.]
One of the best predictors of treatment quality is the use of assertive approaches to continuing care [for clients]. The checklist below is designed to identify the extent to which a program exemplifies such an approach. 

Just like the Transformer shown morphing above from a car into a robot, health reform will bring enormous changes for adolescent substance abuse treatment providers and behavioral healthcare agencies in general.
That's why it's important not to miss this one-hour webinar, "Medicaid Reform," on October 14, 2010 at noon PST / 3 pm EST. (Hat tip to Faces and Voices of Recovery.)
Sponsored by ACMHA (The College for Behavioral Healthcare Leadership), the webinar speaker will be Barbara Coulter Edwards, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Register here.
Questions? Email Kris Ericson, Executive Director of ACMHA.
Can't attend? Don't worry - all webinars will be archived with the rest of ACMHA's monthly webinar series on health reform legislation.