ADHD is common, heritable and impairing. As recognition of the negative functional impacts associated with ADHD in adulthood has grown and stigma around the diagnosis has diminished, demand for ADHD care across the lifespan has increased.
This project will begin foundational work to inform the development of a family-focused lifespan clinic at UW serving adults and children with ADHD. For such a program to be effective, equitable, and sustainable, we must clarify the true needs of individuals living with ADHD as well as the professionals caring for them. We will convene four groups of key community partners: (1) Adults with ADHD whose children have ADHD, (2) Adolescents with ADHD, (3) Mental health professionals representing the fields of psychiatry, psychology, psychiatry advanced practice nursing, school-based counseling, (4) Primary care providers. Results will guide program development and illuminate future research opportunities.
Transgender and gender diverse (TGD) adolescents
experience 4-18 times higher rates of anxiety, 4-23 times higher rates of
depression, 11-54 times higher rates of suicidal ideation, and 2-5 times higher
rates of suicide attempts compared to their cisgender peers. Importantly, parents/guardians
(i.e., caregivers) can have a significant impact on TGD adolescent mental
health, with recent research suggesting that caregiver support and acceptance are
associated with a 30-40% reduction in these mental health concerns.
Community-based support groups are common practice
with TGD adolescents and families. However, group intervention programs that
work specifically with caregivers are rare, and existing programs have not been
formally evaluated. Therefore, the goal of this project is to evaluate TRANSforming
Families: Embracing Change with Teens, a virtual,
multi-family program that was developed by mental health providers in the
Seattle Children’s Gender Clinic (SCGC), to understand its impact on caregiver support
and acceptance and adolescent mental health. This partnership between SCGC
mental health providers and researchers will represent one of the first formal
evaluations of a group intervention program for caregivers of TGD adolescents, the
results of which can inform future implementation and evaluation of this
program in pediatric gender clinics across the United States.
Project includes the design and development of survey instruments for the provider-level skills and agency-level readiness needs assessment and analyzing the data.
Project includes activities surrounding the provision of evaluation, training, and consultation services to PHSKC. These include developing, conducting and analyzing a needs assessment for mental health providers and agency leads to further refine a tier 2/3 model of care. Training and consultation supports will be provided.
The aims of the current project are to: 1) Engage stakeholders to identify targets for ACT SMART redesign to optimize its fit for middle and high school providers who serve autistic adolescents; 2) Conduct prototyping and usability field testing of the redesigned ACT SMART and iteratively refine to ensure usability, feasibility, acceptability, and appropriateness for use in schools.
The aims of the current project are to: 1) Engage stakeholders to identify targets for ACT SMART redesign to optimize its fit for middle and high school providers who serve autistic adolescents; 2) Conduct prototyping and usability field testing of the redesigned ACT SMART and iteratively refine to ensure usability, feasibility, acceptability, and appropriateness for use in schools.
The Evidence-Based Practice Institute (EBPI) is a partnership between the University of Washington and the Washington State Healthcare Authority (HCA), housed at CoLab. We promote the use of evidence-based practices in Washington State through training, research, workforce development, and data sharing. EBPI was initially established as an independent institute in 2007 by the Washington State Legislature House Bill 1088, with the goal of strengthening the quality of public children’s behavioral healthcare. Now, EBPI is housed under the broader umbrella organization of CoLab and continues to serve as a statewide resource to promote high quality mental health services for children and youth in Washington State.
In an effort to address the significant challenges in access to and engagement with evidence-based psychosocial interventions for adolescent depression, the proposed research is piloting the use of Asynchronous Remote Communities (ARC) supported behavioral activation (BA) to treat adolescent depression. We aim to 1) build and conduct usability testing on a functional and robust ActivaTeen platform that will satisfy the needs of mental health clinicians and adolescent patients and 2) test the feasibility, usability, and change in proposed target mechanisms (therapist alliance, timeliness of intervention, social belongingness, and engagement) and outcomes of BA+ActivaTeen compared to BA treatment only within a moderately-sized randomized control trial conducted within Seattle Children’s Hospital outpatient psychiatry clinic.
As rates of pediatric mental health emergencies have
skyrocketed over the last decade – and even more so since the Covid-19 pandemic
– the number of youth staying in emergency departments (EDs) and medical units
while awaiting inpatient psychiatric care or stabilization (i.e., “boarding”)
has reached unprecedented levels. The massive surges in patient volume, coupled
with widespread staff shortages and lack of staff expertise in treating mental
health, are overwhelming ED and hospital resources. This causes dangerous or
even life-threatening delays in care for youth populations in greatest need of
medical and psychiatric treatment. Prolonged ED stays not only delay necessary
mental health care, but they can cause additional trauma and distress for youth
already in crisis. While the boarding crisis affects all hospitals and EDs, it
poses an even greater challenge to community EDs that lack on-site mental
health specialists and/or pediatric providers.
To address the boarding crisis, this project will pilot a
model in which a multidisciplinary team of mental health clinicians at Seattle
Children’s Hospital provides telebehavioral health consultation to community
EDs in Western Washington to guide care for youth who are boarding. The primary
goals of this model are (1) to improve timeliness of mental health care and
reduce length of stay for youth boarding in community EDs, and (2) to support
ED staff in providing more developmentally appropriate and evidence-informed
mental healthcare. The Seattle Children’s team will provide case consultation
to ED providers and staff, including support with decisions about
hospitalization, medication treatment, behavioral interventions and case
management services. The team will also deliver practical trainings to
community ED staff to build their internal capacity to care for boarding youth.
If this initiative is successful, additional funding could expand ED
telebehavioral health consultation services statewide, with a focus on rural
communities.
