Effects of High‐ versus Low‐Intensity Clinician Training on Implementation of Family‐Focused Therapy for Youth with Mood and Psychotic Disorders
Bibliographic Data
The implementation of evidence‐based psychotherapies often requires significant commitments of time and expense from mental health providers. Psychotherapy protocols with rapid and efficient training and supervision requirements may have higher levels of uptake in publicly funded clinics. Family‐focused therapy (FFT) is a 4‐month, 12‐session treatment for bipolar and psychosis patients consisting of psychoeducation, communication training, and problem‐solving skills training. In a pilot randomized trial, we compared two methods of training community clinicians in FFT: (a) high intensity ( n = 24) , consisting of a 6‐hour in‐person didactic workshop followed by telephone supervision for every session with training cases; or (b) low‐intensity training ( n = 23), consisting of a 4‐hour online workshop covering the same material as the in‐person workshop followed by telephone supervision after every third session with training cases. Of 47 clinician participants, 18 (11 randomly assigned to high intensity, 7 to low) enrolled 34 patients with mood or psychotic disorders (mean age 16.5 ± 2.0 years; 44.1% female) in an FFT implementation phase. Expert supervisors rated clinicians’ fidelity to the FFT manual based on taped family sessions. We detected no differences in fidelity scores between clinicians in the two training conditions, nor did patients treated by clinicians in high‐ versus low‐intensity training differ in end‐of‐treatment depression or mania symptoms. Levels of parent/offspring conflict improved in both conditions. Although based on a pilot study, the results suggest that low‐intensity training of community clinicians in FFT is feasible and can result in rapid achievement of fidelity benchmarks without apparent loss of treatment efficacy
Fidelity · Intervention (counseling) · Mental health · Mood · Psychiatry · Psychoeducation · Randomized controlled trial · Session (web analytics) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development · Clinical Psychology · Family Caregiving in Mental Illness · Internal Medicine · Medicine · Psychology · Schizophrenia research and treatment
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR)
The Patient Health Questionnaire Somatic, Anxiety, and Depressive Symptom Scales
A Rating Scale for Mania
Multivariate Assessment of Conflict in Distressed and Nondistressed Mother‐adolescent Dyads
The dissemination and implementation of evidence-based psychological treatments
National Institutes of Health Approaches to Dissemination and Implementation Science
Flexibility and Structure May Enhance Implementation of Family-Focused Therapy in Community Mental Health Settings
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