The Health & Opportunity Partnership (HOPE) project is a joint effort of the Center for Adolescent Health and the HEBCAC/Youth Opportunity (YO!) Program to bring health promotion activities, especially those focusing on mental health, to YO! participants. The long-term outcomes of the project are to increase YO! program completion and to improve participants' mental health. Behavioral outcomes include improved coping strategies, improved treatment compliance, increased use of mental health services, less stress, and decreased externalizing behaviors such as violence and drug abuse. The outcomes will be achieved through seven intervention components, which are described below along with data collection activities. YO! participants’ case plans allow case advocates to monitor participants’ mental/emotional health. Barriers and challenges facing the individual are noted, and any progress or obstacles to the individual’s improved mental health are recorded. Although this system already exists, potential ways to improve it have been identified. Specifically, staff may benefit from additional training in how to track participants’ mental health through case management and how to assist participants in developing potential solutions to mental health problems presented, through on-going monitoring and referrals to mental health professionals. Evaluation components will include pre-post surveys of case advocates and focus groups with YO! participants.
A curriculum will be developed to educate YO! staff and participants about mental health awareness, stigma, stress, coping and social support. This curriculum will be developed by consulting existing literature on how to train program staff and youth to address adolescent mental health concerns. Evaluation components will include surveys and focus groups with session attendees.
YO! participants will conduct an assessment of community mental health providers. They will identify providers and types of services offered by providers, document the process by which a youth receives services, and evaluate how youth-friendly each provider is. Members of the Peer Leadership Group, who receive a stipend for participating in the Hope Project, will lead this effort and recruit other YO! participants to help with data collection and analysis. This assessment will result in the development of a community guide to youth mental health services. Evaluation components include in-depth interviews with assessment team members.
New and recent enrollees at HEBCAC/YO! and Westside YO! will be recruited to participate in a mental health and health screen during the intake process. This screen includes health questions on topics such as substance abuse, violence exposure and reproductive health, currently included in the Westside YO! family planning clinic’s triage process. In addition, the screen asks about mental health topics, including stress, social support, coping strategies, anxiety, perceptions of mental health services, and current/past use of mental health services. Data collected will help to identify prevalence of mental health concerns and relationships among mental health constructs.
A profile of each YO! member will be generated based on responses to the mental health and health screen. The profiles will be given to the YO! mental health counselor, who will schedule appointments with each young person to review the profile. During these short conversations about potential health needs, the counselor will schedule follow-up counseling appointments as necessary and also provide the members with information about referral services.
The Peer Leadership Group was established in January 2006 to increase mental health awareness and help-seeking behaviors of YO! members. Seven YO! members who are well-respected by their peers were recruited to join the Peer Leadership Group (PLG). In the past five months, the PLG has sponsored several educational and social events. Following training in communication, group facilitation and peer mental health, the PLGs will lead peer support group sessions that discuss issues such as mistrust of service providers; stigma of receiving mental health services; and mental health problems such as anger, depression, anxiety, grief and loss. Evaluation components will include post-session surveys and focus groups with YO! participants.
The need for more mental health counselor hours was expressed during discussions with YO! administrators and mental health counselors about how to best enhance mental health services. The part-time substance abuse/mental health counselors provided by Therapeutic Living for Families are on-site at both YO! centers for about 20 hours per week. To support an increase in appropriate counseling referrals and improve the accessibility of mental health professionals, two intended outcomes of this project, about 20 additional hours are needed.
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