Large language models for the mental health community: framework for translating code to care.

Large language models (LLMs) offer promising applications in mental health care to address gaps in treatment and research. By leveraging clinical notes and transcripts as data, LLMs could improve diagnostics, monitoring, prevention, and treatment of mental health conditions. However, several challenges persist, including technical costs, literacy gaps, risk of biases, and inequalities in data representation.

Policy, Design, and Critical Reflections on Behavioral Health Crisis Services for People Experiencing Homelessness.

People experiencing homelessness in crisis have unique structural vulnerabilities and social needs, most importantly lack of housing. Ideal crisis services for people experiencing homelessness must safeguard against criminalization and displacement during periods of crisis, prioritize equity, and provide housing interventions alongside mental health treatment at every stage in the crisis continuum. By outlining how to tailor crisis system financing and accountability, service component and capacity, and clinical best practices, the authors aim to provide hope and guidance for communities aiming to create an ideal crisis system for people experiencing homelessness.

Reproductive psychiatric advance directives: promoting autonomy for perinatal people with serious mental illness diagnoses.

People with serious mental illness (SMI) diagnoses who become pregnant are particularly vulnerable to symptom recurrence and resulting potential lack of decision-making capacity (Taylor et al. J Psychiatr Res 104:100-107, 2018; Bagadia et al. Int J Soc Psychiatry 66:792-798, 2020).

Mental Health App Evaluation: Updating the American Psychiatric Association's Framework Through a Stakeholder-Engaged Workshop.

The app evaluation framework of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) has emerged as an adaptable tool for those seeking to navigate the ever-growing space of mental health apps. The authors describe a meeting convened in December 2019 to refine the APA framework. The expert panel comprised 16 individuals across health care fields, with representation from psychiatry, psychology, social work, nursing, clinical informatics, peer support specialists, and individuals with lived mental health experience.

Peer Workers in the Behavioral and Integrated Health Workforce: Opportunities and Future Directions.

Unlabelled: The growth of the peer workforce in behavioral health services is bringing opportunities to organizations and institutions that serve people living with mental and substance use disorders and their families. Peer workers are defined as people in recovery from mental illness or substance use disorders or both that possess specific peer support competencies. Similar roles are identified for families of people in recovery.

Defining Peer Roles and Status Among Community Health Workers and Peer Support Specialists in Integrated Systems of Care.

Current strategies for integrating general medical and behavioral health services focus primarily on improving the coordination of care and expanding team-based services. Absent from most discussion has been a focus on the workforces that provide the bulk of community-based outreach, engagement, activation, motivational support, and self-management: community health workers (CHWs) and peer support specialists (PSSs). CHWs have primarily been deployed in general medical care and PSSs in behavioral health care.