Factor Structure, Reliability, and Construct Validity of the Wellness Inventory.

Objective: Wellness has been associated with various general medical and mental health outcomes; however, few empirically supported measures capture the breadth of the wellness construct. The first author had previously developed the Wellness Inventory through an iterative process with key stakeholders to establish face and content validity and examined the psychometric properties of the Wellness Inventory as a tool for assessing wellness across eight dimensions.

Methods: The authors assessed the Wellness Inventory by using data from self-report online surveys in three samples of data collected from two groups of respondents: students and faculty members in a public university and behavioral health providers (N=3,446; 50% White and 43% female).

Caregivers of People With Disabilities: A Program to Enhance Wellness Self-Care.

Caregivers are a source of support for family members with disabilities. However, caregivers are at risk for caregiver burden, which can erode self-care skills and lead to poor physical and mental health outcomes. Caregiver Wellness Self-Care, developed to address that risk, is a 5-week group program in which participants learn about strategies that cultivate their inner resources, while connecting with others for support.

Nudges to Support Health and Wellness for Individuals Served by Behavioral Health Programs.

Individuals served by behavioral health programs experience risk factors that threaten health and longevity. Health behavior changes may be supported through environmental modifications known as nudges. The current review (a) examines the potential value of nudges for helping individuals receiving services from behavioral health programs, and (b) offers physical and social environment strategies to support positive health behaviors.

Rethinking the Causes and Consequences of Financial Wellness for People With Serious Mental Illnesses.

Many people with serious mental illnesses live in poverty, which can worsen mental and overall health. The authors suggest strategies to improve health outcomes through behavioral health services and supports that directly target financial wellness while reducing dependence on public benefits. Although some services focus on financial education, this effort is likely insufficient for addressing poverty and its accompanying financial hopelessness.

Perspectives on ICD-11 to understand and improve mental health diagnosis using expertise by experience (INCLUDE Study): an international qualitative study.

Developed in collaboration with WHO Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, this study (conducted in India, the UK, and the USA) integrated feedback from mental health service users into the development of the chapter on mental, behavioural, and neurodevelopmental disorders for ICD-11. The ICD-11 will be used for health reporting from January, 2022. As a reporting standard and diagnostic classification system, ICD-11 will be highly influential by informing policy, clinical practice, and research that affect mental health service users.

Self-Employment for People with Psychiatric Disabilities: Advantages and Strategies.

Self-employment is an alternative to wage employment and an opportunity to increase labor force participation by people with psychiatric disabilities. Self-employment refers to individuals who work for themselves, either as an unincorporated sole proprietor or through ownership of a business. Advantages of self-employment for people with psychiatric disabilities, who may have disrupted educational and employment histories, include opportunities for self-care, additional earning, and career choice.

Is there a return on investment for training?

Topic: Funding for behavioral health service provider agencies is always limited, making it difficult to decide how and when to spend scarce resources on staff training. If evidence existed for a clear return on investment for certain training topics or techniques, agency administrators may find it easier to make the decisions about how much and what type of training to provide to staff.

Purpose: In spite of expert opinion and some evidence that the most common training approaches are ineffective, yielding no return on investment, or a negative return (money wasted), agencies continue to provide primarily single-session lecture-based training-either face-to-face or via a tedious and uninspiring online format.

Training evaluation.

Topic: Training evaluations may encompass different dimensions, from engagement of learners to the achievement of specific and meaningful learning objectives to the ultimate goal of changing what the learners do after completing the training. Yet, most behavioral health agencies fail to evaluate training at all, or limit their evaluations to simple satisfaction measures.

Purpose: Well-designed evaluations can inform decisions on how to use an agency's limited training budget or whether to renew a contract for an external trainer.

Can you hear me now? Teaching listening skills.

Topic: This column provides an overview of methods for training to improve service provider active listening and reflective responding skills.

Purpose: Basic skills in active listening and reflective responding allow service providers to gather information about and explore the needs, desires, concerns, and preference of people using their services-activities that are of critical importance if services are to be truly person-centered and person-driven.

Sources Used: Sources include the personal experience of the authors as well as published literature on the value of basic counseling skills and best practices in training on listening and other related soft skills.

Strategies to Promote Walking Among Community-Dwelling Individuals With Major Mental Disorders.

Individuals with major mental disorders could benefit from low cost, functional ways to support healthy lifestyles. Walking is a popular, preferred, accessible, and safe physical activity for many people. Walking is free, requiring no specialized equipment or membership fee, and is important to support engagement in other daily living activities.

Behavioral health workforce development challenges in the digital health era.

Topic: This column describes challenges for hiring, training, and supervising psychiatric rehabilitation service providers for positions that involve the use of digital health technology.

Purpose: Adoption and implementation of any new technology or technique requires workforce development. This article outlines considerations for policymakers, funders, and service agency administrators as digital health technologies become more widespread.

The long road from policy to practice.

Topic: As behavioral health care policies evolve, based on shifting paradigms and a developing base of evidence, day-to-day practices at the direct service level must change. Workforce development initiatives are a critical component to effect such change yet may be overlooked, underfunded, or implemented in ways that are ineffective.

Purpose: This article highlights considerations for training focused on policy, for training issues relevant across recent policy initiatives, and components of effective workforce development initiatives.

"Defining "peerness" in peer-delivered health and wellness interventions for serious mental illness": Response to letter to the editor.

Replies to comments by Muralidharan et al (see record 2017-13255-009) on the original article by Silver and Nemec (see record 2016-43088-001). The original authors thank the commentators for raising additional questions regarding "peerness." They were honored that their paper prompted this thought and effort to submit comments.

Helping learners level up with cognitive supports.

Topic: This column describes strategies for helping educators and trainers address common problems with executive functioning and memory for their audiences, to better facilitate learning.

Purpose: The purpose of the article is to suggest strategies for maximizing learning and goal achievement for students in academic settings, as well as for building employee knowledge and skills in the psychiatric rehabilitation workforce through worksite-based training.

Sources Used: The content in this column is drawn from the professional experience of the authors as well as available literature.

The role of the peer specialists: Unanswered questions.

Topic: This article raises questions regarding defining the role of peer specialists and related employment practices.

Purpose: The questions raised may be used to guide future research.

Sources Used: Areas needing further investigation were identified through personal and professional experience, discussions with colleagues, and a review of published literature on peer workers.

The Force of Habit: Creating and Sustaining a Wellness Lifestyle.

Regardless of an individual's mental health status, habits are difficult to establish and/or eliminate. Given the importance of good habits to overall health and wellness, nurses and other mental health service providers need to understand the force of habits (positive and negative), factors that make habit change difficult, and approaches that are likely to facilitate building and maintaining good habits. The current article provides a cursory overview of several factors (i.

Prejudice and discrimination from mental health service providers.

Topic: This column describes the experience of prejudice and discrimination that some mental health service users encounter in their interactions with service providers and organizations.

Purpose: The intent of this column is to highlight potential action steps to address the negative beliefs and attitudes of service providers that contribute to prejudice and discrimination.

Sources Used: This description draws from published material and the authors' experience.

Education and training column: the learning collaborative.

Topic: This column describes the key components of a learning collaborative, with examples from the experience of 1 organization.

Purpose: A learning collaborative is a method for management, learning, and improvement of products or processes, and is a useful approach to implementation of a new service design or approach.

Sources Used: This description draws from published material on learning collaboratives and the authors' experiences.

Education and training column: communities of practice.

Topic: This column describes the key components of a community of practice, with examples from the experience of 1 such group.

Purpose: A community of practice is a potentially useful model for developing and disseminating knowledge about psychiatric rehabilitation and to supplement the short-term training sessions that typically constitute psychiatric rehabilitation workforce development.

Sources Used: This description draws from published material on communities of practice and the authors' experience.

Personal narrative as a teaching tool.

Recovery-oriented service systems explicitly value including people with lived experiences of a mental and substance use diagnosis in the design, delivery, and evaluation of those services. Including first-person accounts as part of the education and training of service providers "demonstrates" recovery is possible, promotes empathy, offers insights into the lives of service users, and models a person-centered, person-first approach. More important, it serves as a visual and experiential example of the collegial relationships required for services that are truly recovery-oriented.

Crop dusting or composting?

In the education and training realm of psychiatric rehabilitation, this article uses a composting/crop-dusting metaphor to describe a competency-based framework of staff development. The crop-dusting, or "fly over," approach to training is likened to an aerial dump of information that may have some positive effect on growth if it's done at the right time and in the right place. The composting approach to training makes use of assessment, preparation, delivery, and follow-up.

Walking on the sunny side: what positive psychology can contribute to psychiatric rehabilitation concepts and practice.

Topic: This article suggests a positive psychology framework to strengthen and broaden psychiatric rehabilitation and recovery thought and practice.

Purpose: We inform about positive psychology concepts and measures that can be used to further knowledge, enhance practice, and guide research.

Sources Used: Foundational concepts are drawn from the published literature.

To PPT or not to PPT? That is the question!

PowerPoint (PPT) offers many advantages over the older technologies and has the potential to offer advantages over using no technology at all. I will go over several misuses of PPT, with each followed by suggestions for using the technology more effectively. The column ends with some resource recommendations.

Transformative learning.

The whole point of teaching and training is to have the learners leave in some way different from how they came in-more skilled, more knowledgeable, more self-aware. Transformative learning refers to dramatic change, where the learner achieves a shift in perspective. This shift results from a critical examination of one's own assumptions, values, and beliefs, and of the foundations and expectations of the system in which one operates.