Congratulations to this year's Duncan Pedersen Global Mental Health Award recipient, Helen Martin!
Helen Martin is a PhD student at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Srividya Iyer. Her doctoral research on a self-help intervention for young people with serious mental illnesses in India seeks to address and bridge the scarcity of mental health professionals in this context. Her work integrates perspectives from neuroscience, cultural psychiatry, and assistive technology-based services with the goal to globally improve outcomes of serious mental illnesses
Development and implementation of guided self-help interventions for young people with early psychosis in India - an experimental study
An estimated 3-5% of the global population have psychotic experiences at some point in their lifetime, while 29.2% experience a common mental disorder. Youth are disproportionately affected, and despite the promise of early intervention for psychosis, poor functional outcomes remain a challenge. Consequently, WHO recommends that mental health services be tailored to better address the unmet needs of youth. In recent years, guided self-help interventions have gained momentum, with established efficacy in treating common mental disorders, however, little research has investigated these interventions among youth wit psychosis. The aims of the present study is to create guided self-help interventions for youth with early psychosis as an adjunct to regular care, in a low-to-middle-income country (India). Development of an assistive technology based intervention toolkit integrating psychoeducation, behavioral and emotional support, and treatment adherence based on cognitive behavioral techniques and the recovery model will be developed and be the first of its kind to focus on youth experiencing first episode psychosis (FEP) in India.
A mixed methods approach will be adopted. In the quantitative phase, knowledge synthesis of the existing literature will be carried out. Scales assessing symptoms, behaviors, affect, treatment adherence, and pre- and post-intervention evaluations will be administered. Additional measures of neurocognition, service engagement and functional outcomes will be included. In the qualitative phase, interviews will be conducted among youth with FEP purposively sampled to include those who strongly endorsed or did not endorse the interventions. Focus groups will also be conducted with service providers and families to understand how these interventions have assisted the individual’s recovery. The expected outcome of this study is to help youth experiencing psychosis become change agents in their own recovery with guided professional assistance.
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