Plan to Practice: Understanding Mental Health Clinicians’ Session Planning Practices

This mixed methods project seeks to understand 1) how therapists in public mental health settings prepare for sessions with their clients; and 2) what kinds of structural and clinical supports therapists in public mental health settings might want to support their session planning. Many evidence-based treatments require considerable training and continuous preparation to deliver, and it is often unclear which treatments to select for specific clients. Therapists in public mental health settings serve complex clients with multiple needs and they also often face large caseloads and administrative burdens, making it challenging to prepare for sessions with clients. Our work seeks to understand how we can best support therapists working in these conditions. In this project, we qualitatively interviewed and surveyed therapists in public mental health settings in New York City and Philadelphia. We also conducted focus groups to identify the acceptability and feasibility of several clinical tools and supports.

Collaborators: Courtney Wolk, Ph.D. (University of Pennsylvania), Rebecca Mirhashem, M.A. (Stony Brook University), Yuanyuan Yang, M.A. (University of Kansas)

Community Partners: Community Behavioral Health, Philadelphia

Funding: AIM Youth Mental Health Foundation

Strengthening the Mental Health Workforce

This qualitative study seeks to learn more about the experiences of unionized mental health therapists working in clinics that serve publicly insured clients. The U.S. is facing an historic mental health crisis with increased demand for services and a severe shortage of mental health providers. At the same time, funding for public mental health services has plateaued in recent decades. As a result of these transformations, public mental health therapists are often asked to do more work with less. This study aims to examine the working conditions of public mental health therapists, particularly as their jobs have become more demanding in recent years. We also seek to understand how public mental health therapists have engaged in labor organizing to address these occupational challenges—to improve not just their own labor conditions, but also the healing conditions of their clients.

Collaborators: Danielle Adams, Ph.D. (Washington University in St. Louis) & Rebecca Mirhashem, M.A. (Stony Brook University)

Structural Determinants of LGBTQIA+ Behavioral Health Outcomes

This project is a secondary data analysis of the largest, longitudinal, and dynamic (i.e., continuously enrolling) prospective cohort study of sexual and gender minority adults from across the United States, the Population Research in Identities and Disparities for Equality (PRIDE) study. We seek to identify the relationship between anti-LGBTQIA+ policies and LGBTQ+ behavioral health outcomes. Our work hopes to achieve three goals: 1) develop a comprehensive database of anti-LGBTQIA+ state policies, 2) examine associations between state anti-LGBTQIA+ policies and LGBTQIA+ behavioral health outcomes, and 3) identify whether access to social and economic resources moderates the relationship between these anti-LGBTQIA+ policies and behavioral health outcomes.

Collaborators: Annesa Flentje, Ph.D. (University of California San Francisco) & Nguyen Tran, Ph.D. (Stanford University)

Funding: National Institute On Drug Abuse, Sexual and Gender Minority Research Office, and Office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health under Award Numbers R01DA052016 and OT2OD025276

Project STEP

Project STEP (Single-session Tool to Empower Psychologists) seeks to test the efficacy of a new self-directed, experiential, burnout intervention for clinical and counseling psychology doctoral trainees. Clinician burnout is a serious and widespread issue, and younger and less experienced providers are at an even higher risk of experiencing burnout. This self-directed intervention is designed to target clinician hopelessness and agency by displaying that even small steps can lead to positive change in mental health student clinicians’ and their clients’ lives. In this pilot randomized controlled trial, we aim to examine mental health student clinicians’ perceptions of the intervention (i.e., the intervention’s feasibility, acceptability, and utility) as well as assess their clinical outcomes immediately following the intervention and two weeks later as compared to an active, psychoeducational control.

Collaborators: Jessica Schleider, PhD. (Northwestern University) & Laura Jans, M.A. (Northwestern University)