Just Do You Program for Young Adults With Serious Mental IIlness

Summary

Just Do You is a young-adult-centered and theoretically guided intervention that has shown promise for keeping young adults connected to their professional treatments, while also enhancing their hope for the future and their own recovery. Just Do You is a brief two-module engagement program that utilizes a hybrid provider team of a licensed clinician and peer to address mistrust, lack of hope for the future, stigma concerns, literacy and a sense of efficacy early on when young adults begin a new service experience in adult outpatient day programs (i.e., New York State Personalized Recovery Oriented Services). The aim of this study is to test Just Do You through a moderately-sized randomized trial in order to see if it improves initial and secondary engagement among young adults with serious mental health conditions. The program is designed as an orientation to services, coupled with a curriculum designed to enhance motivation and agency, and keep young adults connected to their care.

This study utilizes a randomized controlled trial to test the preliminary impact of the intervention, compared to best available services (treatment as usual, TAU) at two outpatient programs for adults with serious mental illnesses (n = 195). The program was adapted to two-sessions from the piloted four-session version through conversations with leadership at partnering agencies. The intervention involves intensive staff training and 24 months of ongoing provision, monitoring and supervision of the program. Quantitative survey data will be collected at baseline (pre), 2 weeks (post), 1 month, and 3 months. In this intention-to-treat analysis, we will conduct basic omnibus analyses to examine whether Just Do You leads to improved outcomes relative to TAU utilizing t tests across treatment conditions for each outcome measure specified. The investigators will likewise examine whether changes in the proposed mediating variables differ across groups.

Conditions

• Depression
• Bipolar Disorder
• Psychosis
• Anxiety Disorders

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Just Do You

Just Do You is an intervention designed to keep young adults connected to their professional behavioral health treatments. It is a brief two-module engagement program that utilizes a hybrid provider team of a licensed clinician and peer to increase young adult engagement in adult outpatient day programs (i.e., New York State Personalized Recovery Oriented Services). The first session consists of the following components: 1) Welcome; Group Guidelines, Purpose, 2) Discuss Recovery Principles; Narrative of Role Model; 3) Video of Celebrity Service User and Discussion, and 4) Recovery Goals (and role of services in that). The second session consists of: 1) What are services \& how can they help? 2) Visual art exercise -- Cause of SMI and validation, 3) Maintaining my Medicaid Insurance, and 4) Discussion of Systemic Barriers.

BEHAVIORAL

Active Control

The active control condition will receive the PROS program that is standard in the agencies, and a two-session curriculum on maintaining healthy relationships, which is an identified issue for the population.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• New York University

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Michelle R Munson, PhD · New York University

• James Jaccard, PhD · New York University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

OTHER

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

28 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2018-01-31

Primary Completion

2020-03-07

Completion

2020-03-07

Countries

• United States

Study Locations